Economy

“ Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. ”

“ But mercantile economy, the economy of "merces" or of "pay," signifies the accumulation, in the hands of individuals, of legal, or moral claim upon, or power over, the labour of others; every such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. ”

“ Let it practice true and conscientious economy, not only in the expenditure and application of public moneys, but also in the method of levying them, so as to be equally just to all classes and all economical interests. ”

“ Each civilization has had a background of simple use economy—food gathering, animal husbandry, agriculture—in which most of the people produced what they needed and consumed what they produced. Such an economy employs money rarely. ”

“ Economically it extended from peasant proprietorship and a use economy to a market-money economy; from a society of working peasant farmers to an economy resting upon war captives reduced to slavery; from an economy based on production for trade and profit to an economy based on power-grabbing, special privilege, speculation and corruption; from an austerity economy based on primary production to an economy based on affluence, exploitation, and gluttony. ”

“ We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals. ”

“ It will be seen that all questions of finance and commerce are intimately connected, while those of labor and capital grow out of the conditions they make possible and inevitable. To properly understand the relations of capital and labor, and to harmonize them, demands a correct comprehension of the basic principles of economy which relate to finance and commerce. ”

“ This thoroughly modern market economy features high-tech agriculture, up-to-date small-scale and corporate industry, extensive government welfare measures, an equitable distribution of income, comfortable living standards, a stable currency, a stable political system, and high dependence on foreign trade. ”

“ Economy is the method by which we prepare to-day to afford the improvements of to-morrow. ”

“ Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it practised for freedom, or love, or devotion. ”

“ In relation to product it means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In relation to industry, the material on which industry is about to confer value, that on which it has conferred value; the instruments which are used for the conferring of value, as well as the means of sustenance by which the being is supported while he is engaged in performing the operation.”—Elements of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. ”

“ These multiple functions of a civilized economy are part and parcel of the changes which have converted the simple barter deal of exchanging a pair of shoes for a shirt into a specialized, civilized market place. They also cause civilized economies to devote far more time and money to marketing goods and services than they spend in their manufacture. ”

“ In your valuable article of to-day on the strike of the colliers, while you lay down the true and just law [33] respecting all such combinations, you take your stand, in the outset, on a maxim of political economy, which, however trite, stands yet—if I am not deceived—in need of much examination and qualification. "Labor," you say, like every other vendible commodity, "depends for its value on the relation of supply to demand." ”

“ Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection. ”

“ We have surveyed the field of economical facts, and have examined how they stand related to one another as causes and effects; what circumstances determine the amount of production, of employment for labour, of capital and population; what laws regulate rent, profits, and wages; under what conditions and in what proportions commodities are interchanged between individuals and between countries. We have thus obtained a collective view of the economical phenomena of society, considered as existing simultaneously. ”

“ In its application to land, for instance, a large capital employs new powers of production,—as in the cultivation of wastes;
.... enables its owner to wait for ample but distant returns,—as in planting;
.... facilitates the division of labour;
.... .... the succession of crops, or division of time;
.... .... reproduction, by economizing the investment of fixed capital;
.... .... the economy of convertible husbandry;
.... .... the improvement of soils by manuring, irrigation, &c.;
.... .... the improvement of implements of husbandry;
.... .... the improvement of breeds of live stock. ”

“ The opinion that the price of commodities depends solely on the proportion of supply to demand, or demand to supply, has become almost an axiom in political economy, and has been the source of much error in that science. ”

“ Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The commodity’s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world dominated by the economy. ”

“ The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, according to the prevalent opinion, was to create consumers. A great and rapid consumption was what the producers, of all classes and denominations, wanted, to enrich themselves and the country. This object, under the varying names of an extensive demand, a brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and sometimes totidem verbis a large consumption, was conceived to be the great condition of prosperity. ”

“ After the introductory chapter, or part, in which the "Character and Logical Method of Political Economy" are considered and its claims to be ranked as a science and its relations with other branches are discussed, the whole subject is topically divided and treated under the several heads of "Production," "Exchange," "Distribution," "Consumption," and "Some Applications of Economical Principles." The numerous questions growing out of the labor agitation, the subjects of the currency, paper money, bimetallism, protection vs. ”

“ I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form. ”

“ The three requisites of production, as has been so often repeated, are labour, capital, and land: understanding by capital, the means and appliances which are the accumulated results of previous labour, and by land, the materials and instruments supplied by nature, whether contained in the interior of the earth, or constituting its surface. ”

“ We may, therefore, consider the capital of a producer as measured by the means which he has of possessing himself of the different essentials of production: namely, labour, and the various articles which labour requires as materials, or of which it avails itself as aids. ”

“ But production has other requisites, and of these, the one which we shall next consider is Capital. There cannot be more people in any country, or in the world, than can be supported from the produce of past labour until that of present labour comes in. There will be no greater number of productive labourers in any country, or in the world, than can be supported from that portion of the produce of past labour, which is spared from the enjoyments of its possessor for purposes of reproduction, and is termed Capital. ”

“ I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. ”

“ It is wonderful what an insight into domestic economy being really hard up gives one. ”

“ If every commodity on an average remained unsold for a length of time equal to that required for its production, it is obvious that, at any one time, no more than half the productive capital of the country would be really performing the functions of capital. ”

“ The rate of profits is never increased by a better distribution of labour, by the invention of machinery, by the establishment of roads and canals, or by any means of abridging labour either in the manufacture or in the conveyance of goods. ”

“ An increase of capital beyond population, producing increased competition for labour; 2. An increase of population, occasioning a demand for an increased quantity of food, which must be produced at a greater cost. The rate of profits tends to rise from the following causes:—1. An increase of population beyond capital, producing increased competition for employment ”

“ The circulating medium existing in a country at a given time, is partly employed in purchases for productive, and partly for unproductive consumption. According as a larger proportion of it is employed in the one way or in the other, the real capital of the country is greater or less. ”

“ We must examine the nature of Capital with care, and follow its varied forms without confusion, because it is the only other factor besides labor in the production of commodities, that has to be paid for out of their sale. ”

“ The second exception, of which I shall speak at length in a subsequent chapter, consists in the known effect of an extension of the market for a commodity, in rendering possible an increased development of the division of labour, and hence a more effective distribution of the productive forces of society. ”

“ In the countries in which there are the largest markets, the widest diffusion of commercial confidence and enterprise, the greatest annual increase of capital, and the greatest number of large capitals owned by individuals, there is a tendency to substitute more and more, in one branch of industry after another, large establishments for small ones. ”

“ The agricultural systems of political economy will not require so long an explanation as that which I have thought it necessary to bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system.
That system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country, has so far as I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in France. ”

“ I hold it the duty of the Executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditures, and a sparing economy is itself a great national resource. ”

“ It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge. ”

“ In speaking then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint. ”

“ and, in a word, the proper form of economy must be observed in building houses for each and every class. ”

“ These three elements, Nature, Labor, Capital, conspire in all production of commodities. Nature comes first with her free forces and materials; and then present toil aided by the results of past toil in the form of capital does all the rest in getting commodities ready to sell and selling them. ”

“ We propose to show what Labour can effect, and how it is to be encouraged and economized and rewarded: to treat of Capital, its nature and operation, and the proportions of its increase; and to exhibit the union of these two mighty agents of Production. Under the second head, Distribution, occur the great questions of Rent, Profits, Wages, and Population, the various modes of Interchange at home and abroad, including the consideration of all Monopolies, domestic and foreign. Under the third head, Consumption, are considered the modes of Demand and Supply, and of Taxation. ”

“ If there is as much of food left to them, or of valuables to buy food, as enables them by any amount of privation to remain alive and in working condition, they will, in a short time, have raised as great a produce, and acquired collectively as great wealth and as great a capital, as before, by the mere continuance of that ordinary amount of exertion which they are accustomed to employ in their occupations. ”

“ By such means society might obtain from its existing resources a greater quantity of produce: and to such means it has been driven, when the sudden destruction of some large portion of its capital rendered the employment of the remainder with the greatest possible effect, a matter of paramount consideration for the time. ”

“ By stimulating industry, by rewarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically: while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general benefit, and binds together by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of157 nations throughout the civilized world. ”