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nydus/An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsPublic

Adam Smith examines how the annual labor of a nation determines the supply of necessities and conveniences available to its population. He analyzes how the skill of the workforce and the ratio of productive to unproductive laborers influence a society's overall wealth and standard of living.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER IV. OF THE ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY.

I shall endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those three subjects in the three following chapters, for which I must very earnestly entreat both the patience and attention of the reader: his patience, in order to examine a detail which may, perhaps, in some places, appear unnecessarily tedious; and his attention, in order to understand what may perhaps, after the fullest explication which I am capable of giving it, appear still in some degree obscure. I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.

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