Adam Smith S America

The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free markets Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America’s founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith’s ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention. Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher. Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith’s America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

What exactly is capitalism, and why do its advocates support it? What are the main objections to capitalism that have been raised by its critics? Are there moral reasons to support capitalism, or to oppose it? In this time of globalization and economic turbulence, these questions could not be more timely or more important. This book provides some answers through seminal readings on the nature, purpose, and effects of capitalism as understood by its most influential expositors, both historical and contemporary. In addition to Adam Smith himself, the selections gathered here include essays and excerpts by thinkers ranging from Locke and Rousseau to Hayek and Cass Sunstein. All are chosen and arranged to highlight the ways that capitalism bears on a set of fundamental human concerns: liberty, equality, social order, virtue and motivation. If you want to develop an informed judgment about whether markets and morality mix, this anthology is a good place to begin.

Brings together Smith's most incisive and enduring observations on subjects ranging from political and economic history to morals, taxation, art, education, war and the American colonies.

Adam Smith was a Scottish professor of moral philosophy. He published his classic The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the year the American Revolution began. Smith became widely known for his ideas of free markets, laissez-faire commerce, and the "invisible hand." Yet English politicians, landed gentry, and the nobility paid little attention and enacted none of Smith's suggested reforms. The American colonies, however, began their existence as an independent nation in 1781 with no money, no industry, no banks, and deep in debt. The Founding Fathers-particularly Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin-turned to the ideas of Adam Smith to create and jump-start an economic system for America with both immediate and long-sustained results. This little-known but vital part of U.S. history is now revealed in Roy C. Smith's highly readable new book.

Counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed, Jerry Muller shows that the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations maintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest. Smith's analysis went beyond economics to embrace a larger "civilizing project" designed to create a more decent society.

This book demonstrates that because the United States is enmeshed in a complexity of regulations, government debt, bureaucracy, and taxes does not mean that these policies cannot be reversed. They have been before. Rabushka describes an earlier reversal of mercantilist claims by a growing group of influential politicians influenced by Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. It is Rabushka's contention that Adam Smith's principles of sound money, taxes, minimal governmental regulation, and free trade have led to prosperity.

Smith's THE WEALTH OF NATIONS was the first comprehensive treatment of political economy. Originally delivered in the form of lectures at Glasgow, the book's publication in 1776 co-incided with America's Declaration of Independence. These volumes include Smith's assessment of the mercantile system, his advocacy of the freedom of commerce and industry, and his famous prophecy that "America will be one of the foremost nations of the world".