Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Governments Are Themselves Always, and Without Any Exception, the Greatest Spendthrifts in the Society, According to Adam Smith

Smith also wrote of the dangers of government spending with the kind of insight that the years since have done nothing to diminish the relevance of. The propensity of governments to profligate waste was recognized by Smith in ways that every generation has had to learn over again for itself:
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people … They [governments] are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.
—Steven Kates, Free Market Economics: An Introduction for the General Reader, 3rd ed. (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017), Kobo e-book.


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