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Adam Smith's Profession As A Normative Approach

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According the Professor Porter-Szücs, the arguments we have studied from Adam Smith appear to be heavily influenced by his profession as a moral philosopher. His normative approach appears to commonly take the form of stating that some ideal should or ought to be true or natural. In more recent history, these types of normative assumptions remain prevalent. In this past election cycle, Senator Sanders said, “If the goal of health care reform is to provide comprehensive, universal health care in a cost-effective way, the only honest approach is a single-payer approach” (MIC 1).
On the other side of the common two-dimensional political spectrum, normative assumptions exist too. While speaking about the economic pitfalls of net tax increases and big government, he mentions how people do not like paying taxes and that it is political suicide to pursue policies advocating for tax increases in relatively recent political climates, noted anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said, The governor of Nevada raised taxes and that was repealed, 80-20. Tennessee, Georgia, we’ve had a tremendous collection of votes against taxes. In Michigan, the Republican governor and the Democrats wanted to raise taxes, and that was defeated 80-20. In Maryland, Martin O’Malley’s lieutenant governor lost because O’Malley raised taxes. In Pennsylvania, the Republican …show more content…
However, he is doing nothing more than cherry-picking examples that fit his underlying normative assumptions that net tax increases cause absolute harm, and then trying to extrapolate these into this short-term observed phenomena that can then be exploited to promote his normative beliefs. As Salem once put it, this is nothing more than political

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