Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.
DAVID RICARDOAfter 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.
More David Ricardo Quotes
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Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.
DAVID RICARDO -
The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.
DAVID RICARDO -
If a commodity were in no way useful, – in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, – it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.
DAVID RICARDO -
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 -
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 -
Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.
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 -
To 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.
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 -
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 -
For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.
DAVID RICARDO -
Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, has its natural and its market price.
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Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.
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There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
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






