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Question Have any of you here read "Adam Smith's, Wealth of a Nation"?

musicisgood

Sempai
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4 Sep 2015
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I just got the book so I'm going to read into it on what really happens to a nation that becomes too wealthy for its own good.
Japan is soon to increase the sales tax to 10%. They are playing a very confusing came with the public about the way things are going to be taxed. I really don't think the people here are really ready for the 10% sales tax. Most young people in the major cities are barely getting by these days. Even us older folks seem to have less money in our pockets due to the 8% tax rate, plus all the other taxes we have to pay.
Anyway, if you've read the book, post your thoughts about it.
 
Never read it but certainly a classic and by all accounts still worth reading.

I suspect the Japanese will swallow the 10% tax without much complaint.
Overall goods are cheaper than they used to be aren't they?
20+ years ago there were so many people in the supply chain that the markup was substantial.
That's probably still the case for many items but there are now discount stores that somehow avoid it.
 
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I like the police, health care, social stability, and the speed with which the government can repair things after the many many natural disasters it suffers, so 10% is fine with me. It was 15% in my area of Canada for a long time. If you want a healthy society, you have to pay for it.

I agree that it will hurt the economy, at least in the short term. People I've talked to make it out to be a huge thing, There will be a psychological hurdle for many to overcome.
 
I haven't read Wealth of Nations but this reminded me of an NPR story I'd just heard, that Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" was written in protest of the emerging field of economics, which he believed removed humanity from the equation. In particular he was adamantly opposed to both Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, who more or less argued that the poor deserved to die so that the remaining (more affluent) people could eat. In "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge uses the term "surplus population" (a term coined by Malthus) and suggests that the poor that will die without charity had better hurry up. Scrooge, before his transformation brought on by the visits of the Christmas ghosts, is the embodiment of Malthus and everything Dickens reviled about economics.

Link contains a transcript and audio of the radio story/interview:
 
I just got the book so I'm going to read into it on what really happens to a nation that becomes too wealthy for its own good.
Japan is soon to increase the sales tax to 10%. They are playing a very confusing came with the public about the way things are going to be taxed. I really don't think the people here are really ready for the 10% sales tax. Most young people in the major cities are barely getting by these days. Even us older folks seem to have less money in our pockets due to the 8% tax rate, plus all the other taxes we have to pay.
Anyway, if you've read the book, post your thoughts about it.

I guess I don't see how those two things are supposed to be connected.

Also, tho I haven't read it, I've never heard that tag line associated with it, that it explains ...what really happens to a nation that becomes too wealthy for its own good.
 
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