Profit
In Classical Economics profit is the return to the proprietor(s) of capital stocks (machinery, tools, structures). If I lease a backhoe from a tool rental company the amount I pay to the backhoe owner it is "interest" (i.e. the return to loaned stock/money).
Profit is the difference between the wages that would have been required excavating by hand, and the smaller amount of wages required using the machine. And from this profit "interest" is paid.
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith said the following on profits and interest.
| “ | The diminution of the capital stock of the society, or of the funds destined for the maintenance of industry, however, as it lowers the wages of labor, so it raises the profits of stock, and consequently the interest of money. By the wages of labor being lowered, the owners of what stock remains in the society can bring their goods at less expense to market than before, and less stock being employed in supplying the market than before, they can sell them dearer. Their goods cost them less, and they get more for them. Their profits, therefore, being augmented at both ends, can well afford a large interest. The great fortunes so suddenly and so easily acquired in Bengal and the other British settlements in the East Indies, may satisfy us that, as the wages of labor are very low, so the profits of stock are very high in those ruined countries. The interest of money is proportionally so. In Bengal, money is frequently lent to the farmers at forty, fifty, and sixty per cent and the succeeding crop is mortgaged for the payment. As the profits which can afford such an interest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits. Before the fall of the Roman republic, an usury of the same kind seems to have been common in the provinces, under the ruinous administration of their proconsuls. The virtuous Brutus lent money in Cyprus at eight-and-forty per cent as we learn from the letters of Cicero. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Returns (economics)
Famous quotes containing the word profit:
“Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“And in this too profit begets profit.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“These earthly godfathers of Heaven’s lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)