Ricky Ricardo

So our main topic of today's class was Ricardo.

- He wrote "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" in which he criticized the Poor Laws and called for their abolition
- He hated the Poor Laws because they taxed the wealthy to give support for the poor, so he viewed them as making the rich less rich and making the poor lazy because they expected charity to get by
- Therefore, he believed helping the poor was ruining the state, because it wasn't really helping anyone



Ok, Ok so basically Ricardo thought that if the poor received welfare they would never develop independence and therefore never work for their own living

OBVI this is kinda not true, because it is kind of our moral duty to help the poor but...

His Solution: 

So instead of having the rich taxed to support the poor, Ricardo wanted there to be no laws or taxes towards the poor and have them work out their problems by themselves.. Because they need to stop being lazy and get their act together!!!!
 - He basically thinks that the reason people are poor is because they are lazy and too dependent on the government for help
- and he didn't even really give a real solution, because he thought that everything would work out by itself



So, if we give the poor a nice pat on the back will that solve all their problems?! haha no



Now lets talk about Adam Smith....

- According to Maeve, he basically started Capitalism, meaning he was basically the star of it
- he published a book about it, and really got the ball rolling
- He would be great friends with Ricardo because they were both on the employers' side, not the workers

Ricardo would also be BFFs with Thomas Malthus
- Malthus stated that there were way too many people in the world- a population explosion

Ricardo is in support of Natural Law: 

which means that only nature is the authority over man
- this goes with his whole idea of letting the poor people work it out on their own

So whats the whole deal with them not loving their children?? 

• Because it is an economic burden
• They don’t get attached to them
• Even the rich didn’t care about their kids→ out of sight out of mind
• They were neglected because they didn’t think they were gonna live so they didn’t want to get attached to them
• But then they didn’t care for their children and they died
• So many nurses because rich people didn’t want to care for their kids- un-ladylike
• But poor women also needed workers because they needed to go work