"There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down."
— David Ricardo
There Is No Way Of Keeping
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
About this quote
From On Protection to Agriculture (1822), Ricardo's pamphlet opposing the Corn Laws. Ricardo argued that wages and profits were in a zero-sum relationship: higher wages necessarily compress the profit available to employers, and vice versa. He saw this tension as a structural feature of capitalism, not a policy choice. The observation contributed to the political economy of the early labor movement.
Source
On Protection to Agriculture, Fourth edition (1822)
