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The Margin of Production
This is the engine behind every other tool. Each bar is a plot of land, ordered from most to least productive. As population and development bring more — and poorer — land into use, the least productive plot in use sets the wage everyone earns. On every better plot, the surplus above that wage is collected as rent. Drag the slider and watch wages sink while rent climbs.
Wage
100
92
84
76
68
60
52
44
36
28
Best landWorst land
Wages (set by the margin)Rent (surplus above the margin)Free land (not yet in use)
76
Wage level
48
Total rent
14%
Rent’s share
Progress doesn’t lift wages — it lifts rent. Because workers can always move to the best free land, the wage can never rise above what that marginal land yields. Every improvement in technology or growth in population just pushes production onto poorer land, lowers the margin, and hands the surplus to the owners of better-located land as rent.