Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ ˈ m æ l θ ə s /; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) [1] was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.
Thomas Robert Malthus, after whom Malthusianism is named. Malthusianism is a theory that population growth is potentially exponential, according to the Malthusian growth model, while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline.
The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798, [1] but the author was soon identified as Thomas Robert Malthus.The book warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of the population increasing in geometric progression (so as to double every 25 years) [2] while food production increased in an arithmetic progression, which would leave a ...
Keynes utilizes this idea and also draws on Malthus' concept of government spending during times of economic crisis. [4] Keynes cites this chapter of Malthus' book as "a masterly exposition of the conditions which determine the optimum of saving in the actual economic system in which we live." [8] However, Keynes also critiques Thomas Malthus ...
Malthus argued that since population increases geometrically (i.e. doubling in size each generation), while production can only increase in a linear manner, then disease, famine, poverty and vice are inevitable. Consequently, Malthus criticised Political Justice for expounding unachieveable utopianism. [8]
Thomas Malthus thought any benevolence to the poor was self-defeating; the only check on the numbers of the poor was poverty. Furthermore, the Poor Law gave a right to relief only in the parish where the claimant had a right of settlement, obtained by birth or by prolonged residence: it undesirably limited the mobility of labour.
Pity the philosopher. Underpaid and underappreciated, professional thinkers are doomed to a terrible dilemma: in the best case, their ideas are likely to be ignored. In the worst case, they will ...
Malthus also notes that the checks on the human population are more complicated than those on animals and plants. [25] Malthus explains, for example, that a human check on population growth is the conscious decision not to reproduce because of financial burden. [25] Malthus then explains that the main check on population growth is food.