Every thing he wrote contradicts your claim. He was a libertarian from an economic standpoint, as libertarianism is defined today.
I just told you why he did not. He used the term exactly once in his Wealth of the Nations and that is in a rather peculiar context.
You did NOT tell me why he did not, you only said that he used the term once. How does this mean he didn't coin the term? He was the first one to use the term. He coined it.
When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.
The context that he wrote it in was the following:
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.Thus he's saying that since it's the powerful (masters) that have influence (counsel) with the government, when regulations are in favor of workmen, they are just and equitable.
He lists as an example of a just regulation:
Thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money and not in goods, is quite just and equitable.*91 It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods.^ This is a very light regulation, that he favors mostly as an anti-fraud measure (to ensure that 'masters' do indeed pay their workers). This is the single instance of him saying any thing positive about a regulation
Then he follows up, in the next page, with his regular anti-regulation, laissez faire arguments, e.g.:
In ancient times too it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by rating the price both of provisions and other goods. The assize of bread is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. Where there is an exclusive corporation, it may perhaps be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life. But where there is none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize.The whole book is filled with arguments saying that laissez faire is better. This one example you cited is in a special context, and does not follow with his general arguments.
I can give you dozens upon dozens of examples of him touting laissez faire arguments against regulations.
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
Let's look at this statement in context:
The necessaries of life occasion the great expence of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expence of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. He was making a moral judgment that putting a tax on house-rents was better because it would fall heavier on the rich who have luxurious houses. It was an after thought, not a highly-developed thesis arguing for massive wealth redistribution schemes, or graduated income taxes or any thing like that.
This is the only instance where he shows any sort of inclination to disproportionate taxation on the rich.
Throughout his book, he rails against taxes:
To be left to accommodate, as well as they could, their industry to their situation, and to find out those employments in which, notwithstanding their unfavourable circumstances, they might have some advantage either in the home or in the foreign market, is what in both cases would evidently be most for their advantage. To lay a new tax upon them, because they are already overburdened with taxes, and because they already pay too dear for the necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends.
IV.2.36
Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder. As the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health under an unwholesome regimen, so the nations only that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages can subsist and prosper under such taxes. Holland is the country in Europe in which they abound most, and which from peculiar circumstances continues to prosper, not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them. He would definitely not support the 40% income tax.
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man"
Inscribed on the roof of the Jefferson Memorial