Guess who wrote the following (and don't look it up)

[TomClash]

Poll question: Guess who wrote the following (and don't look it up)

"The masters , being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate."

[dcfirefighter]

1. The same guy who said this

"Both ground- rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them."

A case for Land Value Taxation by the 'father' of capitalism.

[kenny blankenship]

2. I think he also said

people of the same trade will rarely be found together, no matter how small their number or casual the circumstances of their meeting, without soon enlisting each other in a conspiracy to raise prices.
(this is an approximate quotation)

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." actual quotation.

[TaleWgnDg]

3. Uuummmmmm, some guy somewhere in the British Isles who was

both a philosopher and an economist. Note the Brit spelling in the quote as well as the antiquated use of legal terms and of the English language as well as the word "parliament." Therefore, it could only be Adam Smith. This was too easy.

.

[nini]

4. Who picked W? Like he could ever put all that together!

:D

[pnorman]

5. Likewise, in favor of a progressive tax system:

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....<As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to> 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'"
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

pnorman