David Ricardo Quotes

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it.

Making labor less expensive helps firms hire people.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

Plenty of people must also cause cheapness in wages, which cause cheapness in manufacture.

Unemployment is 'involuntary' when the price is above its market clearing level. Workers are unemployed because jobs are not available at the prevailing wages, period. The only recourse is to either expand the number of jobs or somehow lower the wage.

The scientific study of labor economics provided the opportunity for me to unite theory with evidence my lifetime intellectual passion.

The general fact of surplus value, namely that the workmen does not get the full value of his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist, is obvious.

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.

If food were free, why work?

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.

Japan can't get anything on the market very cheaply because it has a large, relatively highly paid workforce which you can't fire.

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?

Moreover, there is an unearned increment on capital and on labor, due to the presence, around the capitalist and the laborer, of a great, industrious, and prosperous society.

It is hard to redistribute wealth of there is no productive class producing it.

If workmen become scarce, the manufacturer gives higher wages, but at first requires an encrease of labour; and this is willingly submitted to by the artisan, who can now eat and drink better, to compensate his additional toil and fatigue.

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

With every increase in the power of production, consumption grew, and the labourer received larger returns for his labour, producing a tendency to immigration.

… immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand: we’re talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages.

When it comes to jobs, jobs are just like products in the sense that the free market operates and sees that somebody gets paid what they're worth.

I have serious concerns with the discussion around minimum wage because it drives up costs, and it could harm jobs.

In the 1950s and 1960s, an explosion of great corporate jobs, together with a restricted supply of labor, produced healthy wage growth.

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment.

By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high. Let us underline this basic principle: Limitation of the supply of any grade of labor relative to all other productive factors can be expected to raise its wage rate; and increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates.