Learning to Listen - Part 6

I’m not going to give a Labor Day talk, but that’s where we’ll start

Last year I felt it was important that I read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
– Smith is sometimes referred to as the Father of Capitalism
• he explored the principles of economics that caused some systems of flourish and others to flounder
– one concern was the ways that governments interfered with industries and commerce
• but something disturbed me as I read through his detailed research and conclusions
◦ Smith took for granted that there would always be a huge mass of poor people
◦ he saw this as the general pattern of civilizations from ancient history
• there were always masters and slaves, emperors and subjects, kings and paupers

Here are a few quotes I pulled from his work:
Smith, “All for ourselves and nothing for others, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. . . . As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents for themselves, they had no disposition to share then with any other persons.”
– “For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few [assumes] the indigence of the many.”
– When the economy of a nation is static rather than increasing, wages for the workers are barely enough to raise a family or even continue the “race of laborers.” “. . . there is no order that suffers so cruelly from [a nation’s economic decline as the poor].” However, the voices of the poor were rarely heard, except in when there were public demonstrations.