Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

“The ordinary expence of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes [governments] are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the … Continue reading →

Adam Smith surveys several methods in Book V, Chapter 3 of The Wealth of Nations by which a government can borrow money. He begin his comprehensive survey with two types of public debt: “unfunded debts” (V.iii.11) and “mortaged debts” (V.iii.12), … Continue reading →

I began this series of daily Adam Smith blog posts (excluding Sundays) way back on January 2nd (see here), starting with Book I, Chapter 1 on The Wealth of Nations — the deservedly-famous “division of labour” chapter. Now, almost four … Continue reading →

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 →