Posted on 04/23/2002 6:45:48 PM PDT by PsyOp
To be filed under: “Things Robert Reicccchhhe doesn’t know.”
There are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the English in North America.
___Plenty of good land, and the liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The Americans, it has been said, indeed, have no gold or silver money; the interior commerce of the country being carried on by a paper currency, and the gold and silver which occasionally come among them being all sent to Great Britain in return for the commodities which they receive from us. But without gold and silver, it is added, there is no possibility of paying taxes. We already get all the gold and silver which they have. How is it possible to draw from them what they have not?
___The present scarcity of gold and silver money in America is not the effect of the poverty of that country, or of the inability of the people there to purchase those metals. In a country where the wages of labor are so much higher, and the price of provisions so much lower than in England, the greater part of the people must surely have wherewithal to purchase a greater quantity if it were either necessary or convenient for them to do so. The scarcity of those metals, therefore, must be the effect of choice, and not of necessity.
___It is for transacting either domestic or foreign business that gold and silver money is either necessary or convenient. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit to British taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of the British empire, their defense in some future war may cost Great Britain as great an expense as it ever has done in any former war. The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.... It is surely now time that our rulers should either realize this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavor to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavor to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
When the expedient of a standing army, besides, had once been adopted by one civilized nation, it became necessary that all its neighbors should follow their example. They soon found that their safety depended upon their doing so, and that their own militia was altogether incapable of resisting the attack of such an army. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
There is scarce perhaps a single instant in which any man is so perfectly and completely satisfied with his situation, as to be without any wish of alteration or improvement of any kind. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A country which neglects or despises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessels of foreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot transact the same quantity of business which it might do with different laws and institutions. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new than in old trades.... When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and are well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The surplus produce of America, imported into Europe, furnishes the inhabitants of this great continents with a variety of commodities which they could not otherwise have possessed; some for conveniency and use, some for pleasure, and some for ornament, and thereby contributes to increase their enjoyments. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Though the encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities it seems to follow an opposite plan: to discourage exportation and to encourage importation. Its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities, but of their advantages. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A coward, a man incapable either of defending or revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two; because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect tolerated in the society or where the whole of a large society is divided into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three hundred, or perhaps into as many thousand small sects, of which no one could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquility. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Times of violent religious controversy have generally been times of equally violent political faction. Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or imagined it, for its interest to league itself with some one or other of the contending religious sects. But this could be done only by adopting, or at least by favoring, the tenets of that particular sect. The sect which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favor and protection it was soon enabled in some degree to silence and subdue all its adversaries.... But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of another when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed every man to choose his own priest and his own religion as he thought proper. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people: the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit to British taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of the British empire, their defense in some future war may cost Great Britain as great an expense as it ever has done in any former war. The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.... It is surely now time that our rulers should either realize this golden dream, in which they have been indulging themselves, perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, and endeavor to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavor to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality. Every constitution, therefore, which it is meant should be as permanent as the empire itself, ought to be convenient, not in certain circumstances only, but in all circumstances; or ought to be suited, not to those circumstances which are transitory, occasional, or accidental, but to those which are necessary, and therefore always the same. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Each animal is still obliged to support and defend itself, separately and independently, and derives no sort of advantage from the variety of talents with which nature has distinguished its fellows. Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another; the different produces of their respective talents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of other men's talents he has occasion for. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A coward, a man incapable either of defending or revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two; because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the progress of despotism the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The rights, the privileges, the personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic who is upon good terms with his own order are, even in the most despotic governments, more respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank or fortune. It is so in every graduation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild government of Paris to that of the violent and furious government of constantinople. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of al commodities. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third. The whole, however, is commonly considered as the earnings of his labour. Both rent and profit are, in this case, confounded with wages. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The market price of any particular commodity, though it may continue long above, can seldom continue long below its natural price. Whatever part of it was paid below the natural rate, the persons whose interest it affected would immediately feel the loss, and would immediately withdraw either so much land, or so much labour, or so much stock, from being employed about it, that the quantity brought to market would soon be no more than sufficient to supply the effectual demand. Its market price, therefore, would soon rise to the natural price. This at least would be the case where there was perfect liberty. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The price of monopoly is upon every occassion the highest which can be got. The natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerabe time together. The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other is the lowest which the selllers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labour, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither.... When the quantity of any commodity which is brought to the market falls short of the effectual demand, all those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither, cannot be supplied with the quantity which they want. Rather than want it altogether, some of them will be willing to give more.... When the quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Some part must be sold to those who are willing to pay less, and the low price which they give for it must reduce the price of the whole. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do so. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and connot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and connot possibly increase without it.
___It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labor. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages are highest. - - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk.I, ch.8, 1776.
Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
All systems either of preference or of restrainst, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Any rise in the average price of neccessaries, unless it is compensated by a proportionable rise in the wages of labour, must necessarily diminish more or less the ability of the poor to bring up numerous families, and consequently to supply the demand for useful labour, whatever may be the state of that demand, whether increasing, stationary, or declining, or such as require an increasing, stationary, or declining population. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely.... - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society, must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Whatever forces a certain number of students to any colege or university, independent fo the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In modern times, the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them more or less independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness ond folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is little better than nonsense. It must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe that the greater part of his students desert his lectures, or perhaps attend upon them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The qualifications of the body, unless supported by those of the mind, can give little authority in any period of society. He is a very strong man, who, by mere strength of body, can force two weak ones to obey him. The qualifications of the mind alone give a very great authority. They are, however, invisible qualities; always disputable, and generally disputed. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principle or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a particular tribe or class of philosopher. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
An instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgement which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the education of the people? Or if it ought to give any, what are the different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different orders of the people? And in what manner ought it to attend to them?
___In some cases the state of the society necessarily places the greater part of individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases the state of society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations, and some attention of government is necessary in order to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
To excel in any profession, in which but a few arrive at mediocrity, is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or superior talents. The public admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities makes always a part of their reward; a greater or smaller in proportion as it is higher or lower in degree. It makes a considerable part of that reward in the profession of physics; a still greater perhaps in that of law; in poetry and philosophy it makes almost the whole. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The liberal reward of labor encourages marriage. The children, during the tender years of infancy, are well fed and properly taken care of, and when they are grown up, the value of their labor greatly overpays their maintenance. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the payment of the interest of the public debt, it has been said, it is the right hand which pays the left. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The want of parsimony in time of peace imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When war comes, there is no money in the treasury but what is necessary for carrying on the expense of the peace establishment. In war an establishment of three or four times that expence becomes necessary for the defense of the state, and consequently a revenue three or four times greater than the peace revenue. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable form not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted....
___The return of peace, indeed, seldom relieves them from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war. These are mortgaged for the interest of the debt contracted in order to carry it on. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
What encourages the progress of population and improvement encourages that of real wealth and greatness. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
An instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgement which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is disipated among a great variety of things. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The men whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operation, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originaly supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labor, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Introduction, 1776.
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid one against another, in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is a 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 are going fast backwards. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense of wages of labor.
___In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labor belongs to the laborer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.
___Had this state continued, the wages of labor would have been augmented with all those improvements in its productive powers to which the division of labor gives occasion. All things would gradually have become cheaper. They would have been produced by a smaller quantity of labor; and as the commodities produced by equal quantities of labor would naturally in this state of things be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise with the produce of a smaller quantity of labor....
___As soon as land becomes private property, the landord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labor can either raise, or collect from it. His rent matches his first deduction from the produce of of the labor which is employed upon land. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditions than where they are low. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The wages of labor vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The wages of labor in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them.
___The probability that any particular person shall be qualified for the employment to which he is educated is very different in different occupations. In the greater part of the mechanic trades, success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes; but send him to study the law, it is at lest twenty to one if ever he makes such a proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A young man naturally conceives an aversion to labor when for a long time he receives no benefit from it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
That degree of liberty which approaches to lcentiousness can be tolerated only in countries where the sovereign is secured by a well-regulated standing army. It is in such countries only that the public safety does not require that the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary power for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness of this licentious liberty. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
An army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men. The precarious subsistence which the chase affords could seldom allow a greater number to keep together for any considerable time. An Army of shepherds, on the contrary, may sometimes amount to two or three hundred thousand. As long as nothing stops thier progress, as long as they can go on from one district, of which they have consumed the forage, to another which is yet entire, there seems to be scarce any limit to the number who can march on together. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways: by sending abroad either, first, some part of it accumulated gold and silver; or, secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufacturers; or, last of all, some part of its annual produce. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The great phenomena of nature — the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, eclipses, comets; thunder, lightning, and other extraordinary meteors; the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals — are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they naturally call forth the curiosity, of mankind to inquire into their causes. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principle or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a particular tribe or class of philosopher. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the progress of despotism the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five-hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The rights, the privileges, the personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic who is upon good terms with his own order are, even in the most despotic governments, more respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank or fortune. It is so in every graduation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild government of Paris to that of the violent and furious government of constantinople. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The great phenomena of nature — the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, eclipses, comets; thunder, lightning, and other extraordinary meteors; the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals — are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they naturally call forth the curiosity, of mankind to inquire into their causes. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt men to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk.V, ch.1, pt.2, 1776.
The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. The son of a creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father's consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is always without it. Other people see some chance of his making something by the one trade: nobody but himself sees any chance of his making anything by the other. The great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the great general, and the highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land. The same difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both. By the rules of precedency a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army: but he does not rank with him in the common estimation. As the great prizes in the lottery are less, the smaller ones must be more numerous. Common sailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and preferment than common soldiers: and the hope of those prizes is what pricipally recomends the trade. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In a long peace the generals, perhaps, may sometimes forget their skill; but, where a well-regulated standing army has been kept up, the soldiers seem never to forget their valour. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
the soldiers of a standing army, though they may never have seen an enemy, yet have frequently appeared to possess all the courage of vetren troops, and the very moment that they took the field to have been fit to face the hardiest and most experienced veterens. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The whole, or almost whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands. Such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in time of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquires nothing which can compensate the expense of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
When a nation is already overburdened with taxes, nothing but the necessities of a new war, nothing but either the animosity of national vengeance, or the anxiety for national security, can induce the people to submit, with tolerable patience, to a new tax. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In the progress of despotism the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their repsective interests in the estate....
II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary....
III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it....
IV. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A tax, however, upon the profits of stock employed in any particular branch of trade can never fall finaly upon the dealers (who must in all ordinary cases have their reasonable profit, and where the competition is free can seldom have more than that profit), but always upon the consumers, who must be obliged to pay in the price of the goods the tax which the dealer advances; and generally with some overcharge. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
If direct taxes upon the wages of labour have not always occasioned a proportionable rise in those wages, it is because they have generally occasioned a considerable fall in the demand for labour. The declension of industry, the decrease of employment for the poor, the diminuation of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, have genrally been the effect of such taxes.... Absurd and destructive as such taxes are, however, they take place in many countries. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
No tax can ever reduce, for any considerable time, the rate of profit in any particular trade which must always keep its level with the other trades in the neighborhood. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
After all the proper subjects of taxation have been exhausted, if the exigencies of the state still continue to require new taxes, they must be imposed upon improper ones. The taxes upon the necessaries of life, therefore, may be no impeachment of the wisdom of that republic which, in order to acquire and to maintain its independency, has, in spite of its great frugality, been involved in such expensive wars as have obliged it to contract great debts. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A tax, indeed, may render the goods upon which it is imposed so dear as to diminish the consumption of them. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
High taxes, sometimes by diminishing the consumption of the taxed commodities, and sometimes by encouraging smuggling, frequently afford a smaller revenue to government than what might be drawn from more moderate taxes.
___When the dimminuation of revenue is the effect of the diminuation of consumption there can be but one remedy, and that is the lowering of the tax.
___When the diminuation of the revenue is the effect of the encouragement given to smuggling, it may perhaps be remedied in two ways; either by diminishing the temptation to smuggle, or by increasing the the difficulty of smuggling. The temptation to smuggling can be diminished only by the lowering of the tax, and the difficulty of smuggling can be increased only by establishing that system of administration which is most proper for preventing it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The Americans, it has been said, indeed, have no gold or silver money; the interior commerce of the country being carried on by a paper currency, and the gold and silver which occasionally come among them being all sent to Great Britain in return for the commodities which they receive from us. But without gold and silver, it is added, there is no possibility of paying taxes. We already get all the gold and silver which they have. How is it possible to draw from them what they have not?
___The present scarcity of gold and silver money in America is not the effect of the poverty of that country, or of the inability of the people there to purchase those metals. In a country where the wages of labour are so much higher, and the price of provisions so much lower than in England, the greater part of the people must surely have wherewithal to purchase a greater quantity if it were either necessary or convenient for them to do so. The scarcity of those metals, therefore, must be the effect of choice, and not of necessity.
___It is for transacting either domestic or foreign business that gold and silver money is either necessary or convenient. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The everweening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune has been less taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more universal. There is no man living who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not some share of it. The chance of gain is by every man more or less overvalued, and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued, and by scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits, valued more than it is worth. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so in the progress of improvements it necessarily becomes one of the most complicated among them. The state of the mechanical, as well as of some other arts, with which it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of perfection to which it is capable of being carried at any particular time. But in order to carry it to this degree of perfection, it is necessary that it should become the sole or principle occupation of a particular class of citizens, and the division of labor is as necessary for the improvement of this, as of every other art. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The want of parsimony in time of peace imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When war comes, there is no money in the treasury but what is necessary for carrying on the expense of the peace establishment. In war an establishment of three or four times that expence becomes necessary for the defense of the state, and consequently a revenue three or four times greater than the peace revenue. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways: by sending abroad either, first, some part of it accumulated gold and silver; or, secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufacturers; or, last of all, some part of its annual produce. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
When the art of war, too, has gradualy grown up to be a very intricate and complicated science, when the event of war ceases to be determined as in the first ages of society, by a single irregular skirmish or battle, but when the contest is generally spun out through several different campaigns, each of which lasts during the greater part of the year, it becomes universally necessary that the public should maintain those who serve the public in war, at least while they are employed in that service. Whatever in time of peace might be the ordinary occupation of those who go to war, so very tedious and expensive a service would otherwise be far too heavy a burden upon them. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
War and the preparation for war are the two circumstances which in modern times occasion the greater part of the necessary expense of all great states. But in the ancient republics of Greece and Italy every citizen was a soldiier, who both served and prepared himself for service at his own expense. Neither of those two circumstances, therefore, could occasion any very considerable expense to the state. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five-hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The great change introduced into the art of war by the invention of firearms has enhanced still further both the expense of exercising and disciplining any particular number of soldiers in time of peace, and that of employing them in time of war. Both their arms and their ammunition are becoming more expensive. A musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar than a balista or a catapulta....
___In modern times the great expense of firearms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford the expense, and consequently to an opulent and civilized over a poor and barbarous nation.... The invention of firearms, an invention which at first sight appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
In every age and country of the world men must have attended to the characters, designs, and actions of one another, and many reputable rules and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and approved of by common consent. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity of his hands in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious in order to be sure that I am perspicious; and after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicious, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject in its own nature extremely abstracted. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
P.S. Does anyone know the code for making an indent after a break, or for inserting an extra space between characters? Please let me know.
Bump for Milton Friedman, greatest economist of the 20th century.
This sounds like socialist/communist crap! In a small "c" capitolist system, every wins! All boats get lifted, just some more than others.
Weren't we all. But it was a High School English Teacher by the name of Mr. O'Brien (a great Irishman felled by a brain tumor) who launched me on the collection of quotations- the best thing I ever got out the High School experience. Or as Winston would have said:
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." - Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930.
At first glance it appears to be. But This quote needs to be put in its larger context to be understood. He was citing the reasons that politicians often use to make their assaults on private property and for levying high-taxes, both of which he opposed.
In England in 1776 it was true that for every rich man there were 500 poor. As for the rest of the quote, it is merely an accurate observation of human nature, which Smith said had to be accounted for in economics and the policies governing them. By no means did he say these were justifications for any kind of socialist policy, though I can see why you might have thought that.
This sounds like socialist/communist crap! In a small "c" capitolist system, every wins! All boats get lifted, just some more than others.
You have to remember the time and place. That was a fair picture of late 18th century England. In his day young noble rakes would lose 10,000 pounds gambling in one night. They had wealth which would make Bill Gates look like a pauper. Smith would have never been read at that time if he had advocated radical Jacobin ideas like the poor getting a fair shot at anything.
"Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments."
"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."
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
" Such regulations [banking regulations] may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communcation of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed."
"Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters."
"The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves."
Best economist of the 20th century? Bullcrap.. (Norvokov)
Probably a better, or at least equal choice would be Freidrich Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom
I'll copy that main quote from the web page:
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers
Adam Smith was the greatest economist of his time, but not for today.
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