HKB
7 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: wages, profit, and rent · trade, markets, and merchants · labor, wages, and the division of work · value, price, and exchange · the passions and the emotions · taxation, tribute, and revenue · ricardo · rent and profits · rent and profit distinction · religious morality and debate · reason and the intellect · public finance and debt
Usually: argument (5) · skepticism (4) · censure (2) · curiosity (2) · commentary or gloss (1) · dialogue (1) · crisis of belief (1) · detachment (1)
“Sir, treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle.” James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Jo · precept
He begins the chapter on rent, defining rent as payment for the soil’s original and indestructible powers, distinguishing it from capital interest and profit and criticizing popular conflations using Adam Smith examples.
ON RENT. It remains however to be considered, whether the appropriation of land, and the consequent creation of rent, will occasion any variation in the relative value of commodities, independently of the quantity of labour necessary to production. In order to understand this part of the subject, we must inquire into the nature of rent, and the laws by which its rise or fall is regulated. Rent is that portion of the…
He criticizes Adam Smith’s view of who ultimately bears a direct tax on wages, quoting Smith’s argument that manufacturers and farmers pass it on, while Ricardo shifts the incidence to profits.
but not a necessary, nor a peculiar consequence of a tax on wages, that though wages would rise, they would not rise by a sum precisely equal to the tax. Adam Smith, as we have seen, has fully allowed that the effect of a tax on wages would be to raise wages by a sum at least equal to the tax, and would be finally, if not immediately, paid by the employer of labour. Thus far we fully agree; but we essentially differ…
This passage is mostly a continuation of Engels’s legislative/parliamentary recap, followed by bibliographic and authorial notes about sources such as Nassau W. Senior, P. Gaskell, and Adam Smith.
{64} Kay, loc. cit., p. 32. {65} P. Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England: its Moral, Social and Physical Condition, and the Changes which have arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour." "Fiat Justitia," 1833.--Depicting chiefly the state of the working-class in Lancashire. The author is a Liberal, but wrote at a time when it was not a feature of Liberalism to chan…
He argues that experimental confirmation is needed, admits he wishes for perfect improvement but sees decisive difficulties, and sets aside conjectures like humans becoming ostriches.
best and safest means of removing abuses and without seeming to be aware of the tremendous obstacles that threaten, even in theory, to oppose the progress of man towards perfection. It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment. Yet so much friction, and so many minute circumstances occur in practice, which it is next to impossible for the most enlarged and penet…
He contrasts Adam Smith’s view of parsimony versus profusion with Godwin’s, arguing that a miser who locks wealth away prevents productive labor and undermines social improvement.
or retard the improvement of the human species? Mr Godwin appears to me to have decided this question against himself in his essay on 'Avarice and Profusion' in the Enquirer. Dr Adam Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is th…
In 1819 Mill undergoes a complete course of political economy taught through daily lectures and written accounts, contrasting Ricardo’s depth with Smith’s errors, including work on bullion controversy pamphlets.
life, unhappily cut short in the full vigour of his intellect, he rendered so much service to his and my father's opinions both on political economy and on other subjects. Though Ricardo's great work was already in print, no didactic treatise embodying its doctrines, in a manner fit for learners, had yet appeared. My father, therefore, commenced instructing me in the science by a sort of lectures, which he delivered…
In conversation, Johnson praises Dr Beattie’s truthfulness, criticizes Hume’s self-conceit and scruples, defends distance from “violence,” and reflects on Hume’s virtue and Smith’s very high estimate of him.
him we were obliged for a previous recommendation, which secured us a very agreeable reception at St Andrews, and which Dr Johnson, in his Journey, ascribes to 'some invisible friend'. Of Dr Beattie, Mr Johnson said, 'Sir, he has written like a man conscious of the truth, and feeling his own strength. Treating your adversary with respect, is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled. The greatest part of m…