An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth |
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Adam Smith advantage afford agricultural amount augmentation become borrowed bourer branches of industry capitalists cattle cause circulating capital circumstances commodities consequence considered consumed corn crease cultivation degree demand depend diminished division doubt employed employment equal evils exchange expense farms favourable fixed capital former formerly fortunes France funds gross produce gross profits income increase instance interest labour and capital landed property landlord latter less limited manufactures master master-capitalist means ment national wealth nature necessary neral number of persons objects owner paid political economy population portion possession present primogeniture production profits of capital profits of enterprise proportion quantity of labour raised rate of profit raw produce real wages regulated remains remark rent revenue riches rise or fall Scotland share small proprietors soil sources of wealth subdivision subsistence sufficient supply suppose things tillage tion tivation wants whole
Popular passages
Page 132 - Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.
Page 179 - The increase of stock, which raises wages-, tends to lower profit. When the stocks of many rich merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual competition naturally tends to lower its profit; and when there is a like increase of stock in all the different trades carried on in the same society, the same competition must produce the same effect in them all.
Page 133 - However much the market price of labour may deviate from its natural price, it has, like commodities, a tendency to conform to it.
Page 143 - ... For since, as has been pointed out above, profit varies directly as the productivity of labour and capital, if productivity increases both profit and wages may be high. High profits due to increased productivity are a benefit to the community ; high profits resting on low wages are a menace. For, " the object of political economy being to show, not only how the greatest amount of wealth may be obtained, but also how it may be distributed most advantageously among the different classes of society,...
Page 176 - York. The price of provisions is everywhere in North America much lower than in England. A dearth has never been known there. In the worst seasons, they have always had a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is anywhere in the mother country, its real price, the real command of the necessaries and conveniences of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a still greater proportion.
Page 496 - For it is very questionable, thinks he, whether this industrial prosperity, founded on a temporary monopoly, will endure. He adds: Mr. Malthus has remarked that it cannot be considered a natural, that is, a permanent state of things, for cotton to be grown in the Carolinas, shipped for Liverpool, and again exported to America in its finished condition. The time must come when the United States will fabricate for themselves. The same observations may be applied to other nations.
Page 49 - Secondly, that a circulating capital will always maintain more labour than that formerly bestowed upon itself. Because, could it employ no more than had been previously bestowed upon itself, what advantage could arise to the owner from the use of it as such ? That it is used, is the clearest proof that some profit is thereby derived, and if there be a profit, the quantity of labour which a circulating capital can command, must be greater than that which produced it.* Bearing these principles in mind,...
Page 126 - Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.
Page 22 - According as capital is rapidly perishable (says Mr. Ricardo) and requires to be frequently reproduced, or is of slow consumption, it is classed under the heads of circulating or of fixed capital — a division not essential and in which the line of demarcation cannot be accurately drawn.