Adam Smith on war and the homefront

A sadly still-timely observation from Scottish moral philosopher and pioneering political economist Adam Smith:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace.

- from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) Part 4, Chapter III, Of Public Debts

Tags: adam smith, war