Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Happy Easter Monday! Before we jump into the last chapter of The Wealth of Nations, I have to confess that Adam Smith’s 900-plus-page masterpiece has taken up a lot of my time these past few months. But that is not … Continue reading →

My translation of the title of this beautiful Spanish hymn: Everlasting Saviour

“The French system of taxation seems, in every respect, inferior to the British.” (WN, V.ii.k.78) For part 1, see here. Adam Smith concludes his lengthy survey of “Taxes upon consumable Commodities” in Chapter 2 of Book V of The Wealth … Continue reading →

Today is Good Friday or “Viernes Santo” in Spanish, the most solemn day in the Catholic liturgical year. As we saw in my previous post (see here), Adam Smith’s comprehensive survey of “Taxes upon Consumable Commodities” in Book V, Chapter … Continue reading →

We now turn to the last major subsection of Book V, Chapter 2 of The Wealth of Nations: “Taxes upon Consumable Commodities” (WN, V.ii.k). Here, Adam Smith makes a number of timeless points, all of which are still relevant today: … Continue reading →

🤡 Happy April Fools Day! 👹 Today, I will discuss Adam Smith’s timeless answer to the following April-fools-like question: should the government impose a Bernie Sanders-style wealth tax on billionaires? To see Smith’s answer to this query, we must turn … Continue reading →

It was the North American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick who famously argued that redistributive taxation is the moral equivalent of forced labour in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), his book-length response to John Rawls’s Theory of Justice. For his part, … Continue reading →

“What in France is called the personal taille is, perhaps, the most important tax upon the profits of stock employed in agriculture that is levied in any part of Europe.” (WN, V.ii.g.5) How should business firms and self-employed workers (e.g. … Continue reading →

One of my daughters (Adys Ann) asked me to post this number today; it’s her new favorite Laufey song. According to Wikipedia (links in the original; footnotes omitted), “‘How I Get’ was released as a single for the album’s deluxe … Continue reading →

We began our review of Adam Smith’s survey of “stamp-duties and duties upon registration” — i.e. stamp taxes and registration/recording fees — in my previous post. Today, I want to focus on Smith’s nuanced critique of France’s unpopular “tax farm” … Continue reading →