Benjamin Franklin Sacrifice

Benjamin Franklin wrote The Way to Wealth because he was frustrated that people were evading taxes, especially because these taxes were to invest in the people and city. Franklin explained that many people complained about the government’s taxes, but the real issue was that the lack of virtue taxed people much more. Throughout the rest of the book, the two ideas he tried to convey were that morality and public service were most important, and one should not be poor by working hard and hedge against risk (which is essentially an extension of the first idea). We know Franklin is serious because throughout all of his works, he clearly placed morality and public service higher than anything. Even though he was very ambitious and business was very
He told us to not travel, but Franklin travelled a lot to make connections and make investments. Readers may think that Franklin was saying that we cannot be him and we should not even try. However, it doesn’t make sense for Franklin to be condescending because readers have seen no evidence of that quality in other works he wrote in the same time period. Franklin always valued self-control and believed that it was bad to disparage others about their faults, especially if it served no purpose. Franklin only expressed his negative emotions when people abused their powers to hurt others, but this book is not targeted towards them. A more plausible explanation of his telling us not to travel is that he believed people may incur heavy losses. If they did, they may have to give up their liberty to whom they owe money. On the other hand, if people make too much money, they will be neither ordered nor temperate and may be addicted to the never ending cycle of money, “let[ting] their business run them”. Besides his advice of not taking risky ventures, Franklin followed his other tenets that he wrote in this book, showing the reader that he cared about his writing. Another way that people may think he is condescending is that in the end, Franklin said that people will not follow his advice, keep on purchasing extravagant goods, and fear taxes. People may think that Franklin is trying to say that people do not