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Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

David Ricardo

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
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
Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, has its natural and its market price.
DAVID RICARDO

Market Natural Price Purchase Sold Value
Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.
DAVID RICARDO

Clever Different Profit Stupidity
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.
DAVID RICARDO

Capital Equality Fix Man
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

Commodity Contribute exchange Necessary Quantity Scarce Way
Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.
DAVID RICARDO

Bank Issue Loan Money Value
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

Additional exchange Farmer Production Quantity Revenue Value
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

Money Production Profit Real Rise Value
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

Evidence Money Rise Value
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

Money Reason Rise Wage Willing
A BOUNTY on the exportation of corn tends to lower its price to the foreign consumer, but it has no permanent effect on its price in the home market.
DAVID RICARDO

Consumer Export Foreign Home Marketing Permanent Price
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
DAVID RICARDO

Profit Wage Way Yourself
Neither machines, nor the commodities made by them, rise in real value, but all commodities made by machines fall, and fall in proportion to their durability.
DAVID RICARDO

Commodity Fall Machine Reality Value
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 RICARDO

Current exchange Money Prevent Variation
Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Contribute Country Happiness Prosperity
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 RICARDO

Discover Farm Land Myself Pieces Productive
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

Commodity Doubt Increase Money Value
The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits.
DAVID RICARDO

Greatness Money Profit Rate Value
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
The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.
DAVID RICARDO

Natural Portion Price
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
The interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interests of every other class in the community.
DAVID RICARDO

Class Community Interest
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
The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity.
DAVID RICARDO

Capacity Equation Factor
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
Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it.
DAVID RICARDO

Essential exchange Measurement Value

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

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Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

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