THE FORGOTTEN ADAM SMITH

Conservatives, free-market fundies, supply-siders, wingnuts and BushBots never mention these excerpts from Adam Smith. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why.

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.
The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X

What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
The Wealth of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the gvernment, 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. The expence of government to the individuals of a great nation, is like the expence of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate.
The Wealth of Nations, Book V Chapter II

The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own..Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.
The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part 3, Article 1