What is the primary assumption made in the body of the paragraph?
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.
According therefore as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.
But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.
Retrieved from: Smith, Adam. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Scotland: William Strahan, Thomas Cadell.
Citizens must be kept in line in order to maintain high production and to create skilled laborers.
Laborers and their application of labor is the driving force behind a nation’s wealth and production.
The wealth of a nation is determined by the government’s ability to enforce certain working conditions and create a large enough workforce.
Citizens have a detrimental effect on a nation’s wealth and production, through failing to work adequately.
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