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Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on April 11, 2002Probably the most important book ever written has as much to say to us today as it did in 1766 . Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nation" establishes the theoretical framework for Capitalism covering every aspect of an economic system that has created the highest standard of living known to man. Adam Smith shows how the interplay between labor, stock and land serve to generate the wealth of a nation. The keys to wealth are freedom, productive men, productive stock, and productive land. Smith says that the role of government is threefold - to protect the land from foreign invasion, enforce contracts and maintain a physical and legal infrastructure that promotes commerce and investment. Government produces nothing and therefore the expense of government reduces the wealth of a nation. Taxes are akin to a proportional reduction in the productivity of labor, stock and land and so should be kept at a minimum in order to increase the wealth of a nation. Any government role beyond the promotion and protection of investment reduces the wealth of a nation and of its people Adam Smith would oppose the many government programs that litter the landscape of the Federal Government today. Welfare, Social Security, education spending by the government, and other non-defense or infrastructure related expenditures diminish the productivity of the people and consequently their wealth. The majority of the people in the United States would have been much wealthier had it not been for these programs.
Adam Smith was also a proponent of free trade. He understood that countries varied in the productivity of the land and the people and that only through free trade could the advantages inherent in different lands and peoples be harnessed to increase the wealth of nations. He opposed guilds and unions which only protected the few at the expense of the many and consequently reduced the wealth of a nation by reducing the productivity of its people.
Adam Smith was truly a man for all season and for all time. It's unfortunate that our politicians and educators are more familiar and enamored by the idiot Karl Marx than they are with Adam Smith. For if they revered Adam Smith as much as they revere Marx we would all be wealthier and happier.
