A decorative woodcut printer's ornament featuring scrolling foliage and floral motifs, a standard 18th-century typographic flourish used to mark the beginning of a major section.

EXPLANATION

OF THE ECONOMIC TABLE.

P roductive expenses are employed in agriculture, including meadows, pastures, forests, mines, fishing, etc., to perpetuate wealth in grains, beverages, wood, livestock, raw materials for hand-worked goods, etc. In Physiocratic theory, only land-based labor was considered "productive" because it was believed to create new matter and value that did not exist before.

The sterile expenses are made on hand-worked goods, housing, including clothing, interest on money, domestic servants, commercial costs, foreign commodities, etc. and so on. The term "sterile" was not an insult; it meant that industry and commerce merely "transformed" or "moved" value without creating a "net product" beyond the cost of the labor and materials used.

the sale
The sale of the net product that the Cultivator brought forth the previous year, by means of the annual advances of 600 livres original: "liv.", referring to the livre tournois. employed in cultivation by the Farmer, provides the Owner with the payment of a revenue of 600 livres.

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The annual advances of 300 livres for sterile expenses which are employed for the funds and costs of commerce, for the purchases of raw material for hand-worked goods, and for the subsistence and other needs of the artisan, until he has finished and sold his work. The crossed-out text indicates an editorial correction, likely to emphasize that these advances cover the "capital" of the trade rather than just the personal consumption of the worker.

The 600 livres of revenue are spent by the Owner: half on the class of productive expenses for bread, wine, meat, etc., and the other half on the class of sterile expenses for clothing, furnishings, utensils, etc.

what is called?

These expenses can be directed more or less to one side or the other, depending on whether the person making them indulges more or less in the luxury of subsistence Luxury of subsistence: excessive spending on high-quality food, drink, and agricultural products., or the luxury of decoration Luxury of decoration: spending on manufactured goods like furniture, clothing, and jewelry.. We have taken here the average state where reproductive expenses renew the same revenue from year to year. But one...