Sunday, July 7, 2013
Malthus's version of "in the long run we are all dead"
Posted by
dkuehn
at
4:50 PM
"Theoretical writers are too apt, in their calculations,
to overlook these intervals; but eight or ten
years, recurring not unfrequently, are serious spaces
in human life. They amount to a serious sum of
happiness or misery, according as they are prosperous
or adverse, and leave the country in a very different
state at their termination. In prosperous times the
mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far
towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately
the working classes, though they share in
the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as
in the general adversity. They may suffer the greatest
distress in a period of low wages, but cannot be adequately
compensated by a period of high wages. To
them fluctuations must always bring more evil than
good; and, with a view to the happiness of the great
mass of society, it should be our object, as far as
possible, to maintain peace, and an equable expenditure."
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Is this from his essay on population or his writings on political economy, Daniel? Good quote, BTW.
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