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September 07, 2012 at 09:45 AM
Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations, the patron saint of capitalism, hated rich people.
Smith hated government interference in the economy because he assumed that business people, and rich people in general, usually would collude to oppress shopkeepers and laborers.
Smith supported the idea that governments should do things like supporting schools, to give children a chance to make something of themselves, and he seems to have been open to the idea that government, charities, society in general, or someone ought to provide for the elderly and the disabled. He regarded the idea of simply letting the elderly fend for themselves as being the kind of barbarous practice a primitive society might adopt, not the kind of policy that a modern country like 18th century England would think of as an ideal.
But Smith also argued that buyers and sellers communicated information about the price of goods, services and labor quickly, efficiently and honestly through prices.
He saw the free movement of prices in free markets as a way for ordinary people to maximize their income, the value of their purchases, and their overall prosperity.
Despite all of the private equity bashing, at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney probably did use the “invisible hands” of the free market to create, increase and preserve value at companies that would have done a lot worse and cut a lot more jobs if he hadn’t been around.
It seems reasonable to wonder whether, if Romney could come up with a stripped-down alternative to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), that PPACA Light package might not work better than the PPACA we have.
