Adam Smith's Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

If the background conditions of your life are ubiquitously wealthy, it's easy to imagine that as the normal state of affairs. Wealth requires an explanation, especially large levels and sustained wealth. If you want to explain poverty, what do you have to do in order to be poor? Well, literally nothing. And a lot of it has to do with the kinds of opportunities that people were unable to have.