Whilst accountants, pundits and politicians are poring over the finer details of the PBR in preparation for the Commons debate, the Conservative front bench should cast their eye over a briefing paper produced by the Adam Smith Institute on raising personal allowances. It is, quite simply, an excellent proposal that is succinctly summarised by the author, Tom Clougherty, on the Adam Smith blog. Ra...

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce." -- Adam Smith From

I have just returned from the Great Smith Street HQ of the Adam Smith Institute, where celebrations were underway to celebrate the 287th anniversary of the great man's birth. My picture above shows ASI Director Eamonn Butler cutting the birthday...

The Adam Smith Institute has a wonderful online gallery of the magnificent monument that has been erected in Edinburgh to the great economist. Until I spoke to ASI's Eamonn Butler on Wednesday I hadn't realised that it was the Institute...

"Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased" - Adam Smith

Fareed Zakaria interviews Wen Jiabao. The usual diplo-guff: It’s the sidebars that are interesting. Apparently, the Communist Party of China is holding high the banner of Adam Smith thought, advancing particularly under the guidance of the Theory of Moral Sentiments,...

Please, go read your Adam Smith again. Since free trade replaced mercantilism, liberals have recognised that capitalism can do good even if that is not its first objective. The benign force Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” was instrumental in the creation of modern journalism. As Gavin Kennedy indefatigably continues to point out, the one reference to

Adam Smith had more complicated views on economic, philosophical and political questions that some of his supporters or detractors assume. Here is a quote from him on banking, a sector which has contributed so much to our current financial crisis: "It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, t...

"With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. " - Adam Smith

So why was Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, carrying Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments in his bag when he came to see Gordon Brown? My hunch is that his aides found it contained a perfect description of the man he was about to meet. I reprint Smith's almost Nostradamus-style description here. This is Brown in a nutshell:The "man of system" is apt to be very wise in...