Distribution and Economic Progress

The subject of this chapter is one of the most venerable of economic problems. The effect of progress upon distribution was a question inevitably raised by the Ricardian theory of rent, and naturally it often engaged the attention of the classical economists. But we do not now need to go back to the classical economists; for we possess today, in the marginal productivity theory, a much superior line of approach to it. The marginal productivity theory is simply an extension of the Ricardian law of rent; and it suggests the problem as infallibly as its predecessor did.