So completely had this belief become a fixed idea in
Ricardo's mind, that he confidently drew from it the consequence, that
in no case could taxation fall on the laborer, since--living, as a
normal state of things, on the lowest possible stipend adequate to
maintain him and his family--he would inevitably, he argued, transfer
the burden to his employer; and a tax nominally on wages would in the
result become invariably a tax upon profits. On this point Mill's
doctrine leads to conclusions directly opposed to Ricardo's, and to
those of most preceding economists. And it will illustrate his
position as a thinker, in relation to them, if we note how this result
was obtained. Mill neither denied the premises nor disputed the logic
of Ricardo's argument: he accepted both; and in particular he
recognized fully the force of the principle of population; but he took
account of a further premise which Ricardo had overlooked, and which,
duly weighed, led to a reversal of Ricardo's conclusion. The _minimum_
of wages, even such as it exists in the case of the worst-paid
laborer, is not the very least sum that human nature can subsist upon:
it is something more than this; in the case of all above the
worst-paid class it is decidedly more.
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