Strange Claim That in Adam Smith's Day 'The Great Majority Had Landed Estates'!
Kent Welton writes in Op-Ed News.com (here):‘Enclosure, Capitalism & The "Kiss My Ass" Farm’
He includes this passage:
‘Nevertheless, the very nature of the "free market" has greatly changed from the days of John Locke and Adam Smith. No longer does the great majority have a landed estate and a once far more common natural independence allowing for a truly fair relations between capital and labor.’
Comment
When did the ‘great majority have a landed estate’?
In the 18th Century? In Britain? In ‘the days of John Locke and Adam Smith? No, Kidding!
The great majority lived on subsistence wages, had no land, could graze a pig or a cow, if they had one, on the commons, and had no political rights, no health services, couldn’t read or write – many men could in Scotland, due to the ‘little schools’ in every parish; but girls and women were left out of schooling - and in England were by law tied to their parish and couldn’t seek work legally elsewhere.
Yes, it has certainly changed since Adam Smith’s days. for the better! The poor are incomparably better off materially (the rest of the world’s really poor take great risks to try to get into Britain and North America to share their ‘poverty’).
Is there a parallel universe that Kent Welton has slipped here from? Is he trying to slip out of the USA to a better place?
He includes this passage:
‘Nevertheless, the very nature of the "free market" has greatly changed from the days of John Locke and Adam Smith. No longer does the great majority have a landed estate and a once far more common natural independence allowing for a truly fair relations between capital and labor.’
Comment
When did the ‘great majority have a landed estate’?
In the 18th Century? In Britain? In ‘the days of John Locke and Adam Smith? No, Kidding!
The great majority lived on subsistence wages, had no land, could graze a pig or a cow, if they had one, on the commons, and had no political rights, no health services, couldn’t read or write – many men could in Scotland, due to the ‘little schools’ in every parish; but girls and women were left out of schooling - and in England were by law tied to their parish and couldn’t seek work legally elsewhere.
Yes, it has certainly changed since Adam Smith’s days. for the better! The poor are incomparably better off materially (the rest of the world’s really poor take great risks to try to get into Britain and North America to share their ‘poverty’).
Is there a parallel universe that Kent Welton has slipped here from? Is he trying to slip out of the USA to a better place?
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