HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: value, price, and exchange · theory of rent · population growth · geometrical progression · fate, destiny, and necessity · agriculture and the land
Usually: argument (1) · skepticism (1)
“Your position, if established, would, I think, overturn both your theory of rent and population, for I understand you to maintain that the higher the price of corn rises, in consequence of more men being employed on the poorer land, the greater will be, not only the surplus produce after paying the labourers, but the ratio of that surplus produce to the whole capital employed on the land.” David Ricardo, Letters of David Ricardo to Thomas Robert Malthus, 1 · insight
Ricardo replies that Malthus’s claim implies population has no effective check, with rent and profit rising geometrically, and he clarifies his earlier numerical comparison between producing corn on better vs worse land.
MY DEAR SIR, On no subject that we have been lately discussing have we so materially differed as on the one now occupying our attention. Your position, if established, would, I think, overturn both your theory of rent and population, for I understand you to maintain that the higher the price of corn rises, in consequence of more men being employed on the poorer land, the greater will be, not only the surplus produce…