Again, capitalism didn’t emerge from Smith’s book essentially going “viral” at a time when books were prohibitively expensive rather The Wealth of Nations was “closer to journalism.” Yes! Production and exchange were already happening, including an ever-widening division of labor that enabled huge leaps in individual specialization, and by extension, productivity.
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That is so because to read The Wealth of Nations is to see that Smith was writing about the capitalist economy, not proposing the adoption of one.Īs Hennessey puts it, “Adam Smith didn’t invent free market any more than Thomas Jefferson invented representative democracy.” In truth, Smith “illuminated the darkness.” Smith “took the world as it was,” and it was increasingly capitalist, only for the Scotsman to reflect “it back to himself.” He “wrote the plain truth about how humans live, work, play, and interact with each other.” This is so important. In saying this, they unwittingly advertise how they did not read this most brilliant of books. To this day even those with a free-market bent will make silly assertions about how capitalism and other undeniably good things began with Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Some reading this will say such a view is a statement of the obvious, but it’s really not. Hennessey is so very correct in beginning a discussion of economics with substantial time spent on another non-economist: Adam Smith. Hennessey obviously does.Īnd it begins with the first chapter. As he puts it, “I woke up one day and realized that all I’d been doing my whole life was acting like an economist responding to incentives, weighing trade-offs, making decisions at the margin, and calculating the utility of everything from investing in my education to helping myself to a second scoop of strawberry ice cream.” Hennessey’s book explains economics through the rational (or irrational) individual in us all, and does so happily and properly free of charts, graphs, and any “whiff of math” the latter another factor in the author’s own avoidance of a science that is anything but dismal for those who understand it. Which leads to an obvious question: what opened Hennessey’s mind to a subject that had long intimidated him? The answer is human action, and it was his own. Hennessey is no doubt correct in his expressed suspicion that “people are afraid of economics, or confused or intimidated by it,” just as he acknowledges he once was. My reviews of his last three books are here, here, and here. The late Robert Bartley, the Journal’s longtime editorial page editor page editor, wrote another of the all-time great economics books ( The Seven Fat Years, my review here) despite lacking a credential, not to mention the excellent books on the subject by one of Hennessey’s legendary deputy editorial page editor predecessors at the Journal, the wonderful and sadly recently departed George Melloan.
Neither was Henry Hazlitt, even though readers would understand economics much better (Hennessey adds that Hazlitt didn’t even finish college) than most fallacy-stalked PhDs after a read of Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson. The simple truth is that Brookes wasn’t an economist. out of the Depression.įor all of the reasons mentioned above, and thousands more, your reviewer (a writer of economics opinion pieces and books on the subject) is thoroughly insulted when referred to as an “economist.” Those who say it are quickly corrected. economy eventually rebounded from relative weakness (by global standards, our 1930s were boom times), a profession that makes astrology serious by comparison happened on the horrifyingly obtuse consensus that the maiming, killing, and wealth destruction that was World War II had an upside: it lifted the U.S. And then as economists had to have a story for why the U.S. On the matter of the 1930s when the only closed economy was the world economy (much like today, and always) such that money and credit flowed with relentless force to wherever in the world they were treated best, economists literally believe that a “tight” Federal Reserve was the cause of the ‘30s contraction.
Economists believe reductions in government spending (whereby Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell have reduced spending power) actually shrink growth. Economists almost unanimously think economic growth causes inflation, even though growth is always and everywhere a consequence of investment that by its very name pushes prices down. After which, let’s please keep in mind just a few of the near-monolithic beliefs of those with PhDs next to their names.
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