252. Trace the connection between Ricardo's theory of rent and the decline in the general rate of profits as a country increases in population. Explain clearly the connection which exists between wages and profits.
253. What effect is produced upon rents, profits, and wages, respectively, in a country like France, where population is stationary and capital advancing?
254. If capital continued to increase and population did not, explain the proposition that “the whole savings of each year would be exactly so much subtracted from the profits of the next and of every following year,” if improvements were stationary.
255. How does social and industrial progress tend to affect the prices of land, raw produce, and manufactures, respectively, and why?
256. The capitalized value of land rises, in the progress of society, from two causes—from one which affects land in common with all investments; from another which is peculiar to land.
257. “The tendency of improved communications is to lower existing rents.” How far is this true, and in what directions is it true?
258. What would be the effect on profits, wages, and rents of an improvement in a manufactured article consumed by the laboring-class?
259. Explain the doctrine of the tendency of profits to a minimum, the cause of that tendency, and the circumstances which counteract it.
260. What was Adam Smith's doctrine as to the decline of profit in progressive communities? Criticise his argument.
261. Mention some of the principal causes which, in the ordinary progress of society, respectively tend to increase or to reduce the current rate of profits.