Adam Smith Was in Favor of Progressive Income Taxes

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

David Frum: Adam Smith was not just a pro free market. He said business people should be viewed with great suspicion, he says. If there is a good public purpose for government to intervene in the economy then it can do its job and smith supported all sorts of interferences when they were used for that purpose. In favor of progressive income taxes; opposed luxury tax on carriages. For example, much tighter regulation on banks than we have seen in our lifetimes.

In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.