“The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers.”

So, landlords, usurers and taxes all raise the cost of living and minimum wage. They suck purchasing power out of the real economy.

Western housing booms have raised the cost of living and priced Western labour out of international markets leading to the rise of the populists.

Trickledown, no it trickles up.

Adam Smith on price gouging:

“The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.”

So this is why hedge funds look for monopoly suppliers of drugs.

Big is not beautiful in capitalism, it needs competition and lots of it.

The interests of business and the public are not aligned.

Adam Smith on lobbyists:

“The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”

Not surprising TTIP and TPP didn’t go down well with the public.

The interests of business and the public are not aligned.

Adam Smith on the 1%:

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
2017 – Richest 8 people as wealthy as half of world’s population

They haven’t changed a bit.

Adam Smith on Profit:

“But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.”

Exactly the opposite of today’s thinking, what does he mean?

When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services

Today’s problems with growth and demand.

Amazon didn’t suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it’s grown (not so good on the wages).