David Ricardo (Garrett Steinberg)

Hello my name is David Ricardo and I am a British political economist. My legacy left a huge influence on how the modern economy is run today and how we produce many products from other countries. I came up with the idea of comparative advantage which states that a country that trades for products it can get at lower cost from another country is better off than if it had made the products at home. I feel the Industrial Revolution did not prioritize this economic strategy as it rather implemented machinery that made all products at home. All products could be put together in our home town which led to countries with better resources or fairer prices being dismissed. I feel that this type of economy does not benefit the citizens as best as it could and leaves other nations to themselves. If we all worked together as a collective unit, more goods would be produced, the economy would benefit in all nations, and more natural resources could be shared. With all this new machinery, the people are blind to what innovations could be made with trade and huge leaps in technology are being ignored. The citizens at this time may not understand this type of trade, but is it in our government's best interest to keep the people away from the knowledge other countries could supply us with? This revolution is taking away from the people and providing them with less than a comparative advantage type of economy could provide.