David Ricardo

Personal life

Born in London, Ricardo was the third of seventeen children in a Sephardic Jewish family (from Portugal) that emigrated from The Netherlands to England just prior to his birth. At age 14 Ricardo joined his father at the London Stock Exchange.

Ricardo rejected the orthodox Jewish beliefs of his family and eloped with a Quaker, Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, when he was 21. His father was so unhappy with this that he abandoned Ricardo and never spoke to him again. Around the same time Ricardo became a Utilitarian.

Ricardo's work with the stock exchange made him quite wealthy, which allowed him to retire from business in 1814 at the age of 42. He then purchased and moved to Gatcombe Park, an estate in Gloucestershire.

In 1819, Ricardo purchased a seat in the British parliament as a representative of Portarlington, a borough of Ireland. He held the post until the year of his death in 1823. As an MP, Ricardo advocated free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws.

He died at Gatcombe Park at 51 years of age.

Ricardo was a close friend of James Mill, who encouraged him in his political ambitions and writings about economics. Other notable friends included Thomas Malthus, whose ideas on population growth Ricardo did not accept, and Jeremy Bentham.

Ricardo's most famous work is his Iron law of wages, a document which shows his capatalist tendencies. In this book Ricardo states that the wages of 19th century British workers should not be increased, though it was encouraged greatly by the masses. This was due to his observation of the direct link evident between money and population. An increase in income of workers equals an increase in children, resulting in a larger workforce. Such an increase means that employers will be forced to lower wages as their working population grows exponentially. Also, the surplus of workers and lower wages will combine to create a greater state of poverty that existed before wages were originally raised. Ultimately, he favoured employers far more than workers, a philosophy adopted by Karl Marx.

Ideas

Ricardo became interested in economics after reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1799.

His publications included: