Memes

I honestly feel like Smith gets a real bad rap from undereducated progressives. He would also have hated what the United States has morphed into, and I'm sure he's spinning in his grave over people using his economic theories as justifications for pure laissez-faire capitalism. "The Invisible Hand of the Market" that conservatives use to justify trickle-down economics and often attribute to him isn't even really his, it's from a batshit insane later guy called Paul Samuelson! Smith only referred to it in the context of international investments, never this idea that "domestic corporations will always do what is good for the public."

I don't agree with everything in Wealth of Nations, but it seems a lot of people just dismiss Smith completely out of hand. We should talk about him just like we talk about Marx, his work is not useless nor trivial.