The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is a nonfiction book about economics. Adam Smith, the author, is considered to be the father of economics and this classic piece is one of the most significant economical novels ever written. It was written in 1776, including several examples of monetary stories relating to old bartering and the usage of different currencies. As Alan B. Krueger states in the introduction to the novel, “No book has had more influence on economists’ thinking and economic policy,” (Krueger xi). Smith uses several old examples to show us how the world works. One of this being all of the things that must happen in order for a coat to be made. Smith explains how the wool goes through the shepherd to the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber, dyer, scribbler, spinner, weaver, fuller, dresser, etc (Smith 19). He goes in depth to describe what a powerful economy is symbolized by and the efficiencies in labor. In my opinion, this book is extremely memorable for its instructiveness. I loved it and the depth of his explanations of the economy and money opened my eyes to money as a whole. One of his opinions was that money is only used to buy labor. To buy anything is to buy however much work was put into getting that item into your hands. In the way Smith put it, I agree with him completely. The bigger problems this novel brings up is inflation and the usage of gold or some item to back up currency being requisite. Smith reminds us that currency is only worth as much and only as much as it is backed up by and how much labor it can buy. This calls to when the US stopped backing up money with gold, rendering money useless and simply a figure of our mind. In talking about this, it turned my opinion to the problems with money within our country. While we are in trillions of dollars of debt, we can print as much money as we want without backing it up whatsoever. It brought up new ideas to my mind and opened my brain up to the economy and its problems. In conclusion, this book is a must-read for anyone who is looking to open their mind up to money and the economy and even simply how the world works. What runs the world and how the world works due to money. For those reading it, I would advise you to take notes and try to summarize things with the harder language and older examples. See everything that is happening in the book in a more current, real-world way.
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