Principles of Political Economy · John Stuart Mill
PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.
246. What are the reasons for the change in the normal values of manufactured and of agricultural commodities, respectively, during the progress of society? 247. Wages and profits in different employments and neighborhoods are not uniformly proportional to the efforts of labor and abstinence of which they are the respective rewards. Classify the circumstances which prevent this correspondence, and show how far their effect is likely to be reduced (_a_) by general economical progress, and (_b_) by the extension of the division of labor. 248. What is the law of diminishing returns? Can you point out any connection between this law and the following phenomena?— (_a._) Density of population. (_b._) Rate of wages. (_c._) Rate of profits in different countries. 249. Sketch the influence on rents and profits of an increase of population and capital concurrently with a stationary state of the arts of production. 250. Is there reason to believe that Mr. Mill has underrated the powers possessed by man of extending the area of production and facilitating the market of food? If such a statement has been made, to what extent is his theory of population modified, and the risks he had indicated rendered distant? 251. Compare the effects on rent, profits, and wages, of a sudden improvement in the production (_a_) of food, (_b_) of some manufactured articles largely consumed by the working-classes.
252. Trace the connection between Ricardo’s theory of rent and the decline in the general rate of profits as a country increases in population. Explain clearly the connection which exists between wages and profits. 253. What effect is produced upon rents, profits, and wages, respectively, in a country like France, where population is stationary and capital advancing? 254. If capital continued to increase and population did not, explain the proposition that “the whole savings of each year would be exactly so much subtracted from the profits of the next and of every following year,” if improvements were stationary. 255. How does social and industrial progress tend to affect the prices of land, raw produce, and manufactures, respectively, and why? 256. The capitalized value of land rises, in the progress of society, from two causes—from one which affects land in common with all investments; from another which is peculiar to land. 257. “The tendency of improved communications is to lower existing rents.” How far is this true, and in what directions is it true? 258. What would be the effect on profits, wages, and rents of an improvement in a manufactured article consumed by the laboring-class? 259. Explain the doctrine of the tendency of profits to a minimum, the cause of that tendency, and the circumstances which counteract it. 260. What was Adam Smith’s doctrine as to the decline of profit in progressive communities? Criticise his argument.
261. Mention some of the principal causes which, in the ordinary progress of society, respectively tend to increase or to reduce the current rate of profits. 262. Why do profits tend to fall as population increases, and how may this result be retarded or prevented? 263. What is the effect of a general rise of money wages, apart from the consideration of a greater efficiency of labor, in prices, profits, and rent? Give reasons for your answer. 264. How does the general progress of society in wealth and industrial efficiency tend to affect the rate of wages, the rate of profit, and the rate of rent, respectively? 265. What is the general effect of the progress of society on the land-owner, the capitalist, and the laborer?
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