X-Nico

4 unusual facts about The Wealth of Nations


Stringer Bell

Far from any expectations of a drug kingpin, his bookshelf includes a copy of The Wealth of Nations.

Bell attends economics classes at Baltimore City Community College and maintains a personal library, including a copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

The Wealth of Nations

It was not mentioned in the House of Lords until 1793, by Lord Lansdowne and Lord Loughbourough.

In 1777 the Prime Minister, Lord North, in the first budget after the book was published, got the idea for two new taxes from the book: one on man-servants and the other on property sold at auction.


Productive forces

Marx and Engels probably derived the concept from Adam Smith's reference to the "productive powers of labour" (see e.g. chapter 8 of The Wealth of Nations), although the German political economist Friedrich List also mentions the concept of "productive powers" in The National System of Political Economy (1841).


see also

Adam and Company

Edinburgh is often referred as the birthplace of Scottish Enlightenment, and one of the leading lights of that era, Adam Smith, published ‘An inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ in 1776 which revolutionised economic theory.

Herbert Stein

In Stein's reading, The Wealth of Nations could justify the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, mandatory employer health benefits, environmentalism and "discriminatory taxation to deter improper or luxurious behavior."

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a 2002 book by Dr. Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.