Adam Smith and Human Flourishing

The creation of America prevented the destruction of humanity. Its a bold thought. But as i look more into economics i begin to realize that without the building of our nation in the late 1700's economically the world would have self destructed if the weak economic patterns throughout the nations continued. Human Flourishing is critical for economical flourishing. Its like a math equation, without human flourishing one simply cannot achieve economic flourishing. Before the establishment of America the mindset of humanity was narrow-minded, thinking only of building wealth for one's self. This narrow mindset allowed the minority of the wealthy to get richer and the majority of the poor to get poorer. Adam Smith concluded that "The measure of the good society is thus at least the state of the worst off than of the well off".

Throughout Adam Smith's work one can formulate an opinion that Smith cared more for the well-being of people than the financial success of a nation. I think that's what made our nation so unique, for the first time in history leaders took a step back and evaluated the sanctity of life and the value behind human flourishing. A nation can be well off financially but if the people are not happy and in support of their nation the nation will fall. We need a society that supports the government, military and political figures in order to be the most successful nation to ever reign the earth.

I do believe Adam Smith creates a strong and valid economic moral to standby, however i think it needs to be take with balance. If the poor are consistently "catered" to, there begins to grow a lack of motivation for success. The rich will struggle to have the motivation to contribute to society because they have no incentive to, especially if all the benefits of their work drain directly down to the poor. The poor's motivation will also begin to die away if they can rely on the rich for support. In my opinion if the mass majority is poor a support for the middle class should be conducted. If the mass majority of a society is rich then the high class should be supported, but the poor should still be given opportunity to create for themselves a life in the high class through work and education. If the majority of the population is poor, the high class must still receive an incentive to stay wealthy and continue to work and produce because the product of their work and contribution will be greater than what the poor can contribute.

For example if i owned a dance studio. Lets say that out of 20 dancers 5 of the dancers (25%) were wealthy and parent's contributed financially to the dance studio. The other (75%) 15 dancers were low class and could barely afford to pay tuition. Now its time to hand out solos for a competition, if i give all the solos to the 5 high class dancers i will continue to be given donations to my business, but will loose the motivation in the 15 other low class dancers to improve their dance ability and pay the little tuition they can. Before i know it i will only have 5 dancers in my studio, the 5 wealthy dancers. Lets say i do the opposite and hand out the solos to only the low class dancers, and support the mass majority. By doing this i loose the financial support of the high class dancers and my business will collapse. Economically the wisest decision would be to hand out half of the solos to the high class dancers and half of the solos to the low class dancers. This will ensure financial stability and incentives for the dancers in each category to train harder.

Overall human flourishing takes precendance over all. Without humanity gaining compensation for the work put it, work will not be put out. And without work put out economically no society can flourish.Keeping the faith and passion of the people alive is the key to success. Yes, there will always be poor. Yes, there will always be a high class. It is the ability to be given a ladder to climb one's way up that determines human flourishment.