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But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.

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

Advantage Economics Growth Heart Import Manufacture Principle
Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.
DAVID RICARDO

Compare exchange Gold Goodness Greatness
Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.
DAVID RICARDO

Competition Contract Control Freedom Legislature Wage
There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Fall Labour Profit Rise Value
Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it.
DAVID RICARDO

Essential exchange Measurement Value
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

Commodity Possession Require Source Value
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

Cultivate Fertile Land Population Requirement Situation
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

Greatness Honesty Mindset Powerful Thinking
The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Greatness Money Profit Rate Value
Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent.
DAVID RICARDO

Belong Ordinary Production Profit Rate Togetherness Value
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

Agriculture Husband Improvement Profit
Gold and silver are no doubt subject to fluctuations, from the discovery of new and more abundant mines; but such discoveries are rare, and their effects, though powerful, are limited to periods of comparatively short duration.
DAVID RICARDO

Discover Doubt Fluctuation Gold Limitation Powerful Rare Silver Subject
Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.
DAVID RICARDO

Abuse Bank Power State
The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.
DAVID RICARDO

Capital Farmer Purchase
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

Absolute Production Quantity Rate Requirement
If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.
DAVID RICARDO

Beer Food Price Raise Tax

But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.

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But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.

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Popular Authors

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