A Review of Adam Smith's Economic Classic

Paper Summary:

This paper begins with a review of the division of labour as presented in Adam Smith's economic classic. The paper considers the causes and how it is beneficial to society. Next, the paper looks at the topic of price and value of commodities and it expounds further on labour and its recompense, i.e. wages, and on the profits of stock and the rent of land. This review is followed by a review of the nature, accumulation and employment of stock and a short description of the towns-country interdependency in the industry of countries. The paper concludes with an examination of the mercantile system, the colonies and the colony trade of the world's greatest nations, that followed the great discoveries at the end of the fourteenth century and fifteenth century.

From the Paper:

"The wealth of a particular people consists in the necessaries and conveniences that their annual produce supplies or provides them with the means to exchange for. The extent of that welfare depends on two basic circumstances: in the first place, it depends on the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which this produce is worked out, and secondly, it depends on the proportion between the number of those that are employed in useful labour and those who are not employed. The first circumstance is proved to be of more consequence; but the second, if it is proxied instead by capital, the stock of which has direct implications on the number of people employed in productive labour, is of no less interest and comes to the accumulation of wealth and growth of industry. Different theories have been put forward in the policies of the countries through the centuries in their strive to accumulation of wealth, but the mercantile, or commercial, has long been the favourite and its flavour is sensed in these days' economic policies too. To expose its inherent fallacies has been one major goal of the author of this book. "

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