It is here we come to the heart of the matter. The economic principle of comparative advantage’, ‘a country may, in return for manufactured commodities, import corn even if it can be grown with less labour than in the country from which it is imported.
DAVID RICARDOTo alter the money value of commodities, by altering the value of money, and yet to raise the same money amount by taxes, is then undoubtedly to increase the burthens of society.
More David Ricardo Quotes
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A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.
DAVID RICARDO -
As the revenue of the farmer is realized in raw produce, or in the value of raw produce, he is interested, as well as the landlord, in its high exchangeable value, but a low price of produce may be compensated to him by a great additional quantity.
DAVID RICARDO -
Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.
DAVID RICARDO -
If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.
DAVID RICARDO -
Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.
DAVID RICARDO -
But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.
DAVID RICARDO -
Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.
DAVID RICARDO -
In the same manner if any nation wasted part of its wealth, or lost part of its trade, it could not retain the same quantity of circulating medium which it before possessed.
DAVID RICARDO -
It is not by the absolute quantity of produce obtained by either class, that we can correctly judge of the rate of profit, rent, and wages, but by the quantity of labour required to obtain that produce.
DAVID RICARDO -
Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, has its natural and its market price.
DAVID RICARDO -
For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.
DAVID RICARDO -
I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.
DAVID RICARDO -
If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.
DAVID RICARDO -
The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity.
DAVID RICARDO -
The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.
DAVID RICARDO