Smith still has so much to teach us today because of his deep understanding of human nature.
It is a moral and intellectual crime to discard Adam Smith in the teaching of modern economics. Today’s mainstream and elite universities do not give Smith the attention he deserves. You can earn an undergraduate degree in economics without ever turning the pages of The Wealth of Nations, in which Adam Smith presents himself, a moral philosopher, as the world’s first development economist. Those same students may not even know of its precursor, the Theory of Moral Sentiments.