\n

The Adam Smith hardly anyone knows

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Quotes-economics.htm

The Adam Smith that everyone knows:

Every individual… intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his original intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectively than when he really intends to promote it.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

The Adam Smith that hardly anyone knows:

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy when part of the members are poor and miserable.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“The rate of profit… is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ….(As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to) ‘remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

“The interest of dealers, however,… is a always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public… The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought… never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
— Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

Leave a Reply