To think that federal labor law has had little to do with union decline, as Soltas puts it, is hopelessly naive. He's misled by the fact that union membership has fallen even though we have laws guaranteeing the right to collective bargaining, and by the failure to recognize how inadequately those laws are enforced.
For other people named Adam Smith, see Adam Smith (disambiguation). Adam Smith FRSA (16 June 1723 NS (5 June 1723 OS) â 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher, and author. He was a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy, and was a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment era.
The exact date of his birth is unknown, but we known that he was baptized on 16 June 1723 (or 5 June in the old style Julian calendar). His father, also named Adam Smith, was a lawyer and civil servant, who died six months before Smith's birth; his mother was Margaret Douglas. Few events from his early childhood are known, although he was reputedly abducted by gypsies at the age of four and eventually released without harm.