John Stuart Mill
For J.S. Mill, the capitalist system of Great Britain was able to generate a sufficient production for the whole population and lead to a sufficiently high standard of living. Therefore, for him the problem was to make the distribution of income more equal.
In his view, the distribution of product or income can be separated from the process of production. He believed that at that time in Britain the economic development had already advanced so much that Britain could and should enter the stationary state before long (Principles of Political Economy, 1848).For Mill, the stationary state was not considered the ultimate state of economic development in which the profit rate and the real wage rate were at their minimum level, and no population growth and no increase of production were any more possible. In Mill’s stationary state, a sufficient economic surplus can be produced, but a part of it can be devoted to leisure time of people, which people may make use of to improve the quality of their life; for example, people can spend time in enjoying arts, or passing leisure time with friends. Mill recommended that we should employ the economic surplus in diminishing working hours and increasing leisure time.
Mill believed that the control of population growth was necessary in order to improve the living conditions of common people, for which he did not deny the use of artificial means of birth control. As to the Poor Laws, he contended to reform it to make the labouring classes have a mind of self-help and he supported the reform of the Poor Laws in 1834.