Who Owns Adam Smith? | Common Dreams

Who Owns Adam Smith? | Common Dreams

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old one, but interesting    Adam Smith did believe in many items modern liberals believe

snip

First, while he celebrated truly competitive capitalism, he didn't trust capitalists very much. Consider these quotes:
· "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."
· "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."
Second, he believed that workers deserve a living wage:
· "It is but equity ... that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerable well fed, clothed and lodged."
Third - and here's a real shocker - he believed that the wealthy should pay more in taxes:
"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."
Fourth, he believed in the necessity of public investments in infrastructure and public goods. He spoke of the duty of government to support "public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.