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Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled.

Thomas Malthus

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Thomas Malthus
Age: 68 †
Born: 1766
Born: February 14
Died: 1834
Died: December 23
Anglican Priest
Demographer
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Scientist
Sociologist
Statistician
Warwickshire
England
Thomas R. Malthus
Interpreters
Short
Trends
Fraught
Beyond
Fulfilled
Oracles
Term
Suppose
Provoked
Every
Popular
Interpreter
Always
Population
Sustained
Never
Expectations
Doom
Series
Based
Infinitely

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I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.
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Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.
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The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
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It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge.
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In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.
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The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?
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To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.
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On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
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If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches!
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Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
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The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.
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I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.
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Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.
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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
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Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
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It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.
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In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.
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The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.
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Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
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