Thank Adam Smith for our prosperity -- and hope progs don't destroy...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : Capitalism delivers the quantity, quality and variety of goods and services that the centrally planned economy never could.
49% : Adam Smith (1723-1790) put together the classical model of economics, consisting of free trade, limited government, the virtue of thrift, balanced budgets and sound money.
42% : But as the world gradually adopted Adam Smith's model of free trade, low taxes, deregulation, patent law and sound money (supply-side economics), we witnessed the Industrial Revolution in the West, then in the East, and a 100-fold increase in our standard of living.
42% : The Economic Freedom Index -- based on the Smithian measures of laissez faire, balanced budgets, sound money, free trade and rule of law -- shows a marked increase from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s.
39% : First and foremost was his "very violent attack" on state intervention in the economy, which he called mercantilism (what we might call today "economic fascism").
30% : At the top of the list, free trade and globalization have been a big success.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.