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Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II / An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth cover

Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II / An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth

Chapter 15: BOOK III. THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.
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About This Book

The work investigates why industrial progress and increased productive power often coexist with persistent or worsening poverty, rejecting common explanations such as the Malthusian claim that population inevitably outstrips subsistence. It reconstructs the laws of distribution—rent, wages, and interest—showing rent as the central force that, through rising land values under private ownership, absorbs gains from progress and limits the advance of wages and returns to capital. The analysis traces how population growth and technical improvement magnify land rents and wealth concentration and advocates capturing unimproved land value through public appropriation or taxation as a remedy.

BOOK III.
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.


CHAPTER I.—THE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION—NECESSARY RELATION OF THESE LAWS.

CHAPTER II.—RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT.

CHAPTER III.—INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST.

CHAPTER IV.—OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR INTEREST.

CHAPTER V.—THE LAW OF INTEREST.

CHAPTER VI.—WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES.

CHAPTER VII.—CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF THESE LAWS.

CHAPTER VIII.—THE STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED.

The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first philosophical systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex, and a particular connecting chain, or principle, is generally thought necessary to unite every two seemingly disjointed appearances; but it often happens that one great connecting principle is afterward found to be sufficient to bind together all the discordant phenomena that occur in a whole species of things.—Adam Smith, Essay on the Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Inquiries, as Illustrated by the History of Astronomy.