If I discover a manure which will enable me to make a piece of land produce 20 per cent more corn, I may withdraw at least a portion of my capital from the most unproductive part of my farm.
DAVID RICARDOEvery transaction in commerce is an independent transaction.
More David Ricardo Quotes
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Called an inquiry into the laws which determine the division of the produce.
DAVID RICARDO -
The exchangeable value of all commodities rises as the difficulties of their production increase.
DAVID RICARDO -
If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.
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 -
Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.
DAVID RICARDO -
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
DAVID RICARDO -
A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits.
DAVID RICARDO -
After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.
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 -
Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.
DAVID RICARDO -
If English money was of the same value then as before, Hamburgh money must have risen in value. But where is the proof of this?
DAVID RICARDO -
During the period of capital moving from one employment to another, the profits on that to which capital is flowing will be relatively high, but will continue so no longer than till the requisite capital is obtained.
DAVID RICARDO -
But it is clear that the price of labour has no necessary connection with the price of food, since it depends entirely on the supply of labourers compared with the demand.
DAVID RICARDO -
There can be no greater error then in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption.
DAVID RICARDO -
The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.
DAVID RICARDO -
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 RICARDO -
The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity.
DAVID RICARDO -
The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits.
DAVID RICARDO -
No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.
DAVID RICARDO -
Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it.
DAVID RICARDO -
There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.
DAVID RICARDO -
Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.
DAVID RICARDO -
Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.
DAVID RICARDO -
Rent is the portion of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the user of the original and indestructible powers of the soil
DAVID RICARDO -
The demand for money is regulated entirely by its value, and its value by its quantity.
DAVID RICARDO