How the Economy is Like a Top
Cleveland State University: Adam Smith's Spinning Top
Students and others sometimes ask me why I have chosen a spinning top to represent my economics and personal finance course. Well, there is nothing truly original, and I took my inspiration from this beautiful work of art in front of the Cleveland State University administration building. It is a bronze, spinning top that, as it unwinds, reveals on a three-foot high sheet the words of the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, from his great 1776 work An Inquiry into the Origin and Nature of the Wealth of Nations. It represents Smith's thinking that a healthy economy is a lot like a spinning top, in that it maintains its balance although it is revolving at a rapid rate. Slow it down too much (recession), however, and it will fall over under its own weight. Spin it too rapidly (inflation, over-expansion), and it careens wildly across the floor, damaging itself and anything in its path.