Rent
In classical economics rent was the return to an "owner" of land. In later economic theory this term is expanded as economic rent to include other forms of unearned income typically realized from barriers to entry. Land ownership is considered to be a barrier to entry because land owners make no contribution to the production process. They simply prevent others from using that which would otherwise be useful.
"Rent is that portion of the produce of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil. It is often, however, confounded with the interest and profit of capital, and, in popular language, the term is applied to whatever is annually paid by a farmer to his landlord." (Ricardo)
Read more about this topic: Returns (economics)
Famous quotes containing the word rent:
“I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)