Price

“ Much of their reasoning goes no farther than to explain one price in terms of other prices. If we attempt to explain the money price of a finished product in terms of the money prices of its raw materials and other money costs of prices of production, it is clear that we merely shift the problem. We have still to explain these antecedent prices. ”

“ The price is a consideration wholly for the vendor, and the value a consideration wholly for the purchaser. Hence it follows that both value and cost enter into a bargain, even when legitimately made. But value goes solely to determine the demand, and is solely cognizable by the purchaser or consumer—by him who receives; while cost (or burden) goes to determine the price, and is solely cognizable by the seller or producer—by him who renders. ”

“ When the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual demand, and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either exactly, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. ”

“ The price of the one species of commodities varies only with the variations in the demand; that of the other varies not only with the variations in the demand, but with the much greater, and more frequent, variations in the quantity of what is brought to market, in order to supply that demand. ”

“ Instead of one price, every one who had commodities or services to sell adopted a scale of at least four prices: “pay price,” “money price,” “pay as money price,” and a “trusting price;” and the seller, before fixing his price, invariably asked his customer how he would pay.6 “Pay price” was barter; “money price” was payment in foreign coin; “pay as money” was in the ideal money of the island; “trusting” was an enhanced price, according to time. Thus, supposing a customer wanted a knife, its price in “pay” would be a bushel of corn; in “money price,” a fifty-cent gold or silver coin ”

“ The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. ”

“ Value expressed in money is called price. There can be such a thing as a general fall or a general rise of prices. A general fall in prices means an increase in the value of money, and a general rise of prices means a fall in the value of money. ”

“ In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed. ”

“ Mill, the actual market price is the price which equalizes supply and demand in a given market; as I view the case, the ‘proper market price’ is the price which equalizes supply and demand, not as existing in the particular market, but in the larger sense which I have assigned to the terms. To this price the actual market price will, according to my view, approximate, in proportion to the intelligence and knowledge of the dealers. ”

“ How the Normal Price of a Single Good in a Bundle of Unlike Goods would be Fixed.—Let us see how a bundle made up of commodities A, B, C, and D would get its value in the market. We will suppose that these articles are here named in the order of their importance, and that A has the highest utility, since it renders the most important service, and that D has the least. It may be that the article A has a utility rated at one hundred dollars in a particular man's esteem. ”

“ The money price of an article at any given period is usually stated to depend upon the proportion between the supply and the demand. The average price of the same article during a long period, is said to depend, ultimately, on the power of producing and selling it with the ordinary profits of capital. ”

“ and with this reminder other things came to her—how strange it was that, with all allowance for their merit, it should befall some people to be so inordinately valued, quoted, as they said in the stock-market, so high, and how still stranger, perhaps, that there should be cases in which, for some reason, one didn't mind the so frequently marked absence in them of the purpose really to represent their price. ”

“ As it is the nominal or money price of goods, therefore, which finally determines the prudence or imprudence of all purchases and sales, and thereby regulates almost the whole business of common life in which price is concerned, we cannot wonder that it should have been so much more attended to than the real price. ”

“ Supply and demand, cost of production, the capitalization theory, the imputation theory—the general laws of the concatenations and interrelations of prices—are quite adequate for the confutation of the quantity theory. They are laws concerned with particular prices, and the price-level is nothing but the average of particular prices. ”

“ Price is a relative word as much [51] as Value is, but it does not relate to so many things. Price is specific, and Value universal. Both equally involve buying and selling, but one sale of a single valuable against money leads to Price, while ten thousand sales of the same valuable against other than money would not conduct to complete Value. That would require a sale of this valuable against all other valuables in the world, and a complete statement of the comparative results. ”

“ Its money value, therefore, or price, will represent as well as anything else its general exchange value, or purchasing power; and from an obvious convenience, will often be employed by us in that representative character; with the proviso that money itself do not vary in its general purchasing power, but that the prices of all things, other than that which we happen to be considering, remain unaltered. ”

“ It is quite obvious that these things are of use, are, indeed, indispensable for production; what more natural than that capital should command a price? It almost seems as though we might pass, without further ado, to a detailed discussion of the forces which determine the amount of this price. ”

“ Cairnes213 fitly says: “The supply of a commodity always tends to adapt itself to the demand at the normal price. I may here say briefly that by the normal price of a commodity I mean that price which suffices, and no more than suffices, to yield to the producers what is considered to be the average and usual remuneration on such sacrifices as they undergo.” ”

“ They do so in terms of Price when measured by Money; they do so in the essentials of Value when measured by comparisons of commodities. As a rule, however, Money-prices are fair guides to Commodity values. Commodity values rise and fall according to cost of production, inclusive of delivery; and in so far as Money is stable, the rise and fall in prices is evidence of variations in production cost.
The relative rise and fall in Value, be it measured by prices in Money or otherwise, is so common a phenomenon of Trade that critics might be pardoned for denying a Value level. ”

“ If, speaking broadly, and embracing somewhat longer periods, all descriptions of commodities sell at their respective values, it is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases, but the constant and usual profits of different trades, spring from the prices of commodities, or selling them at a price over and above their value. ”

“ One commodity is measured in bushels, or units of volume of wheat, the other in dollars, or units of weight of gold. In general, a price of any species of wealth is merely the ratio of two physical quantities, in whatever way each may originally be measured. ”

“ Price-making generally precedes the demand upon the media of exchange, and does not at all imply any necessary demand at the moment upon the standard in which the prices are expressed.... The offer of money for goods is only a resultant of price-making forces previously at work, and does not measure the demand for goods.... ”

“ If we attempt to ascertain the changes in the cost of production of any commodity from the changes in its money price, the conclusion will require to be corrected by the best allowance we can make for the intermediate changes in the cost of the production of money itself. ”

“ In regular business, as a rule, the seller's price on his wares must be more than their cost to him; when goods are sold, the price the buyer has paid becomes their cost to himself. In exceptional cases, when goods are sold at cost, the seller's price is made the same as the cost of the goods to him, the cost to the seller and the cost to the buyer becoming then identical. ”

“ And now that money was in general use, the price of the oars was double that of the bowl. What the scale of prices actually should be was controlled by three things: 1st, by the amount of money in circulation; 2dly, by the quantity of things that were bought and sold for money; and 3dly, by the number of times commodities were bought and sold before they were used. ”

“ In the "Essays on Political Economy," since reprinted as "Munera Pulveris." See p. 10, § 12 of that book, where the passage is printed in italics: "The reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confusing value with cost, or with price. Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it; price, the quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it." ”

“ And finally, let us remember that the current price always stands either above or below the cost of production, according as the sale of a commodity takes place in the favorable or unfavorable period of the industry. ”

“ Sometimes the rise in an individual price raises and at other times lowers the general price level.*10 To draw a physical parallel let us suppose that a thousand piles have been driven in a quicksand and that the owner wishes to raise their level a foot. ”

“ In order to show what natural price is, we add up all the wages that have been paid, and declare that to be the cost and then say that the cost governs the price. Then if we are asked why are wages what they are, we turn the argument backward and say that since the selling price is so and so the wages that can be paid out of it only amount to such and such. ”

“ Its proportion to their number, and the resulting worth of currency, are calculable; but its proportion to their will for labour is not. The worth of the piece of money which claims a given quantity of the store is, in exchange, less or greater according to the facility of obtaining the same quantity of the same thing without having recourse to the store. In other words it depends on the immediate Cost and Price of the thing. We must now, therefore, complete the definition of these terms.
59. All cost and price are counted in Labour. ”

“ The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled. ”

“ When we say, for example, anything is sold at a price far above its true value, we mean far above its cost price, including under “cost” the average rate of profits that must go to the maker if he is to live by his trade. ”

“ The words costly and dear, as contradistinguished from common and cheap, both indicate a high price. We, however, call a commodity costly whose price, compared with that of other similar commodities, is high. On the other hand, we call a commodity dear when we compare it with itself, and with its own average price in other places and at other times.600
In individual cases, the price of a commodity is determined most usually, and at the same time most superficially, by custom; people ask and pay for a commodity what others have asked and paid for it. ”

“ The price of every other article will be founded on the price of food. The price of what it takes a day to produce, will be a day’s maintenance; of what it takes a week to produce, a week’s maintenance,—such maintenance being calculated according to the requirements of the occupation, and always with a proportional surplus for saving. ”

“ This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Ricardo." [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.] ”

“ Each time a pile has risen, the average level of all has fallen.
VIII.75 The proposition that a general increase in demand, resulting in an increase in trade, tends to decrease and and not to increase the general level of prices, may be regarded as a sort of pons asinorum to test one's knowledge of the fundamental distinction between those influences affecting the general price level and those affecting the rise and fall of a particular price with respect to that level. ”

“ With respect to the first of these propositions, it may be observed, that the cost of any article to the purchaser includes, besides the ratio of the supply to the demand, another element, which, though often of little importance, is, in many cases, of great consequence. The cost, to the purchaser, is the price he pays for any article, added to the cost of verifying the fact of its having that degree of goodness for which he contracts. ”