Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Adam Smith on Inequality

Some interesting quotes from Adam Smith, the father of economics on inequality

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”


“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable. ” 


"Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. 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.”


"The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."


“No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean."
“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” - See more at: http://inequality.org/quotes/adam-smith/#sthash.fr3PZxg4.dpuf

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