Theory of value

On value, Petty continued the debate begun by Aristotle, and chose to develop an input-based theory of value: all things ought to be valued by two natural Denominations, which is Land and Labour(p. 44). Both of these would be prime sources of taxable income. Like Richard Cantillon after him, he sought to devise some equation or par between the 'mother and father' of output, land and labour, and to express value accordingly. He still included general productivity, ones 'art and industry'. He applied his theory of value to rent. The natural rent of a land was the excess of what a labourer produces on it in a year over what he ate himself and traded for necessities. It was therefore the profit above the various costs related to the factors involved in production.

Population Theory Malthus believed that people in general had an insatiable desire for sexual pleasure. As a consequence, unchecked reproduction by an immoral lower class would lead to geometric (exponential) increases in population" and double every 25 years. According to Malthus, the problem lied in the fact that food supply limited the quantity of population that an area can support. Specifically, agriculture productivity would gradually diminish because of decreasing soil fertility availability, and agriculture production would not be able to keep up with population growth. In other words, Malthus believed that the population would naturally increase faster than the amount of food that could be produced to feed them, and ultimately, starvation would limit population growth.

For Malthus, the ultimate difference between the rich and the poor was the high moral character of the rich. Population growth rates could be kept in check using both positive means (famine, plague, war, starvation) and preventive methods (sterility, abstinence, birth control). However, only the wealthy or moral upper class of people would show restraint. So, if everyone's wealth and income increased through reforms that had the effect of wealth or income redistribution, the majority of people, especially the lower class, would respond by having more children causing the majority of people to return again to their subsistence level of living. Therefore, because any policy that favored or helped the lower working class resulted in a redistribution of wealth and income that merely had the effect to increase the number of poor, Malthus opposed any such policy.