Adam Smith S Equality And The Pursuit Of Happiness

This book examines Adam Smith’s main principles in Wealth of Nations as the basis for effective policymaking. Adam Smith wanted to increase happiness through this formula for a good life: equality, liberty, and justice. Free market interpretations of Smith, the book argues, grossly misrepresent his thought, emphasizing only liberty and not also equality and justice. This book suggests policies that combine all three in order for happiness to be maximized.

The conflict between conservatives and liberals over public economic policy appears to have become a permanent feature of the American political landscape. Conservatives seek economic solutions with the market as virtually the sole organizing economic principle, invoking individualism inspired by the Declaration of Independences right to the pursuit of happiness. Liberals look to an important economic role for a federal government established by the Constitution to promote the general welfare. In addition to the disagreement among the political class, there is also no agreement among economists, with no model reliably predicting the economic crises of recent decades. Under these circumstances, the author believes individualism and the concern for the common good may only be reconciled through policies which promote equality of opportunity or, as Abraham Lincoln expressed it, equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. The reconciliation of individualism and the common good is developed through reviews of the meaning of liberty, happiness, and their economic implications. The historical performance of the American economy is described in the context of the evolution of American federal government from one of limited economic scope, supporting laissez-faire capitalism, to the current mixed government. The more expansive role of government is described in terms of taxation policy and spending, including concerns over the national debt and its significance. With this background, the general reader is invited to follow the authors path to a policy of equality of opportunity with specific proposals for an end to poverty, assistance to children, assistance to postsecondary education and training, and commitments to social and medical security. A specific taxation policy is proposed to fund these programs while maintaining a prudent and manageable national debt. Associated with these proposals are reforms to make the federal government more representative of the people.

The most renowned document of 1776, the American Declaration of Independence, eloquently asserts in 1,320 words the self-evident truths of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Equally significant from that year is Adam Smith's 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.' This foundational text in economics, mirroring the Declaration's dedication to happiness - or 'welth' in Middle English - spans an imposing 131,000 words across two volumes. Through twenty-four Economical Stories, A Wealth of Narrations makes economics accessible and relevant, offering a unique perspective on how we understand happiness and wealth today.

John E. Hill’s Adam Smith’s Sociability and the American Dream seeks to correct the three misunderstandings that have hindered the pursuit of the American dream and contributed to excessive individualism at the expense of community. Market fundamentalists ignore the importance of Adam Smith’s impartial spectator for capitalism; his ideal economy was not a free market but a sociable and fair one. A fair market would promote individuality within vibrant communities and would be consistent with Smith’s “justice, liberty, and equality” formula. Such a sociable market would also be more productive. Second, many Christians misunderstand the love your neighbor commandment, excluding the outsider, so explicit in the parable. Failure to follow John Adams’s warnings that aristocrats are dangerous in a republic. Free market advocates devalue the immense contributions communities make to the economy. Greater sociability would also facilitate the pursuit of happiness. It would not be necessary to reinvent the wheel to move to this more ideal society. Cooperative organizations already exist in the United States and in other countries as models for reform.

This book will trace the trajectory of the surprising idea that the victims of monopolistic conspiracies should be allowed to fight back using the same fraudulent and immoral weapons as the conspirators. In other words, if left to itself, the market will produce the antibodies necessary to survival, notwithstanding its most sinister pathology – the tendency of its principals to conclude private agreements behind the scenes. Originally conceived in a moral context halfway through the 16th century, the idea was then taken over by the world of commercial law in exactly the form it had been employed theologically. Surprisingly, though, after doing the rounds for over a century, it then disappeared without trace. This book will look at how Adam Smith revived and recharged the idea. He applied it in The Wealth of Nations (1776) to the conflict of interest between employers and workers in the attempt to break the stranglehold of the artificial compression of wages to minimum subsistence level. After Smith, the freshly revived idea went underground again for another half-century until, in the 1820s, it assumed a front-row position in the newborn liberal political economics. This book will look at how, in the framework of the debate over the repeal of the Combination Laws, the idea was dusted down and put back in the fight, having first been stripped it off its moral clothes and dressed instead in the new robes of economic pragmatism.

David Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore.