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Adam Smith: Governments
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Named one of the country's top 10 political reporters by Columbia Journalism Review, Adam Smith became the political editor in 2001. He focuses on state and national politics. Smith came to the Times in 1992, and has covered politics and government in Pasco County, St. Petersburg and Tallahassee. He has ... been a general assignment reporter, handling everything from health care issues to consumer investigations to Florida's prison system.
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This is the Adam Smith warning all over again. Government granted monopolies seem like cheap ways of subsidizing desired activities (research, in this case), but they end up costing a fortune. It's like funding things on bond issuance. The government regularly gives money to the NSF and the NIH because science has a solid track record of providing big returns on the investment, but using patents to cover research is obviously bad, since we're taking a loan instead of buying an investment. Business patents involve the government taking a loan to subsidize business, but without any public discussion about the possible benefits of taking that loan.
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Smith notes that some jurisdictions relied on systems of assessment that had reputations for being very accurate. But he doubts that governments would undertake the effort needed to keep assessments accurate, and therefore he regards systems based on recorded leases to be better. Smith ... discusses taxes proportional to what land produces, noting that these can be quite disproportional to rent and that they discourage both the improvement of land and its cultivation.
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The following is drawn from government records of campaign contributions to Adam Smith. Campaign contributions are one of the most direct conduits for influencing members of Congress. How to use this information.
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Smith wasn’t hung up on the old mercantilist fallacy that more goods should be exported than imported. He exploded this "balance of trade" fallacy by arguing that since goods and services constituted a nation’s wealth, it made no sense for government to make sure that more left the country than came in.
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Smith vigorously attacked the antiquated government restrictions which he thought were hindering industrial expansion. In fact, he attacked most forms of government interference in the economic process, including tariffs, arguing that this creates inefficiency and high prices in the long run.
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