Right. They’re too busy arguing about the gold fringe on courtroom flags.
And this is you trying to convince us you’re more clear sighted than everyone else?
Just as an intellectual exercise, I want to see if I can decipher this. You claim to argue for common man (?) against special interests, bankers and whiny libtards (my new favorite perjorative) who want to wipe their ass on the constitution by taking us off the gold standard. But, you note that the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate the value of money. You also note that the aforementioned common man is too dumb, fat and happy to care that he is being taken for a ride by a bunch of ninnies is black dresses. I am pretty sure of that part. Now, are you advocating some kind of total Mad Max world so that you and other right-thinking people can rewrite the Constitution to make things nice and sparkling clear, or are you claiming that the rest of us who aren’t persuaded by your arguments are going to cause the total collapse of the system via Zimbabwean hyperinflation caused by us morons and our stupid fiat money? I think it’s the latter based on your Mencken quote, but I am not completely sure because you are worried that you are going to bring the heat down for advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
How many did I get right?
Thanks,
Rob
You forgot the part about how going off the gold standard will cause “people starving, mass hysteria, and blood in the street”. Fortunately, it’s apparently a slow process.
But he knows what he’s talking about. He once read a book.
[QUOTE=William Jennings Bryan]
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
[/QUOTE]
Are you writing a book, mmmbeer ? I think it’ll be really something.
I do have one question while you’re here. You write “the government can use whatever they want to as money and may print up as much as they … want to…and the people deserve to get it put to them good and hard.” I see you’re following in the great tradition of W.J. Bryan, but we don’t even get to be crucified on a Cross of Gold these days: all we get is a Cross of Paper.
Someone will ask the inevitable question: What does this have to do with the price of eggs? Let me be that person. I see that US Egg Farm Price Received was 0.863 this April, but only 0.770 as recently as April 2010. Is this the hyperinflation danger you’re alerting us to, or is there more?
Little-known fact: Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech also introduced the trickle-down theory:
You can make the argument that this speech marks the start of the modern era of liberal versus conservative ideologies. (The parties don’t align well until much later, since many Republicans were Progressives and many Southern Democrats were Troglodytes, but we can talk about the two sides coherently in ways you can’t for earlier politics.)
The problem with Bryan’s opposition to gold was that he was for a bimetallic standard to benefit the silver miners. Still hard money. And bimetallic standards are deadly: the two metals will get out of sync instantly and Gresham’s Law is a higher authority than the Supreme Court. You really shouldn’t use him as a shining example in that way.
I love this rationale. People have it too good to want a change so we need to make them suffer. We need to do this so they’ll have a good life.
Do you know who else told people that suffering would make them free?
It pretty much sucks as a rationale because it ignores the reality that going off the gold standard has worked.
Here’s an economic history of the United States on the gold standard: the Panic of 1796-1799, the Recession of 1802-1804, the Depression of 1807-1810, the Recession of 1812, the Depression of 1815-1821, the Recession of 1822-1823, the Recession of 1825-1826, the Recession of 1828-1829, the Recession of 1833-1834, the Recession of 1836-1838, the Recession of 1839-1843, the Recession of 1845-1846, the Recession of 1847-1848, the Recession of 1853-1854, the Panic of 1857-1858, the Recession of 1860-1861, the Recession of 1865-1867, the Recession of 1869-1870, the Panic of 1873, the Depression of 1873-1879, the Recession of 1882-1885, the Recession of 1887-1888, the Recession of 1890-1891, the Panic of 1893-1894, the Panic of 1896-1897, the Recession of 1899-1900, the Recession of 1902-1904, the Panic of 1907-1908, the Panic of 1910-1911, the Recession of 1913-1914, the Recession of 1918-1919, the Depression of 1920-1921, the Recession of 1923-1924, the Recession of 1925-1927, and the Great Depression.
This is the prosperity and economic stability we should go back to?
This is me convincing you that I’m done talking about it.
I didn’t say going off the gold standard would cause those things. The system collapsing will cause those. Completely different subject.
I ONCE read A book. Nice. And relevant. Well done.
By your comment, everyone can see that you don’t understand the rationale. Stepping you through it one step at a time, the government expands the money supply and keeps it inflated. It is easy money times. The government and the people spend all they have, then they spend some more. And some more. And more, until they are up to their eyeballs in debt. They are buying $40,000 cars and $300,000 houses on a $30,000 income. If you think this is people having it too good to want a change, uhhh, I don’t really know what to say to that. You have no clue as to what good means? I don’t know. “We need to make them suffer”? I didn’t say that. That I see that it is coming is not me making it happen.
How many ounces of gold did it take to buy an iPhone in 1930?
You can’t have a meaningful conversation about inflation or monetary standards by comparing to a single good, and ignoring technological change. At least some inflation isn’t due to “government theft”, it’s due to the fact that we’re actually richer than we used to be, so goods and services (like tailoring) that require more labor input are comparatively more expensive than those that don’t.
You also can’t have a very meaningful discussion when you use hard-to-pin-down terms like “decent man’s suit”. What qualifies “decent”? Men’s Wearhouse on sale? Savile Row bespoke? Men’s suits range in price by a factor of 100. The fact that the value of an ounce of gold has stayed in that range isn’t particularly impressive. The price of gold fluctuates quite a lot.
What is required in a debate about whether gold is a better money than paper is to show how paper has retained it’s buying power better than gold has.
Actually, as technology advances and capital investments produce more goods, the price of things comes down. Not up. It is inflation that makes things more expensive, not increasing the output of goods with the same input.
If anyone wants to show how paper has outperformed gold in maintaining purchasing power or limiting the governments ability to manipulate the money supply, I will continue, otherwise have a great day. Been fun, well interesting anyway.
You said:
Sounds like you want suffering to me. What else could you mean by “disintegrate”?
Look, the fact is that we don’t have high inflation right now, let alone hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is bad. Everyone agrees. OK. And you can’t have hyperinflation with commodity money, because while you can increase the money supply by creating/extracting more of the commodity, you’re limited by real world increases in the commodity. So yes, you can add more cacao beans, buy you have to actually grow the cacao beans. Or you can dig up more gold, but you have to actually mine the gold.
But I’m still vague on what problem you’re attempting to solve. You aren’t advocating paper money convertable to gold at a fixed rate are you? Paper money is paper money, it isn’t gold, it is a promise to pay gold that is only worth anything if you believe the promises of the issuer. So what you want is not “the gold standard” but actual gold commodity money, yes? But thing is, how do you mandate the use of gold coins in today’s financial market? Are you advocating banning credit cards? Checks? Buying things on credit? All these things create a form of paper/electronic money.
Or do you actually just want to go back on “the gold standard”?
But can’t you see that today’s Federal Reserve Notes are already freely convertable to gold? They just aren’t convertable at a fixed rate. In other words, people will trade you gold bars and coins for US dollars. In other words, you can use dollars, or Euros, or Pesos, or Yen, to buy gold and other precious metals. And this was not the case back in the days when the dollar was on the gold standard and it was illegal to own gold.
You can sidestep all the supposed dangers of fiat money simply buy immediately trading any fiat money paid to you into real commodities like gold.
Gold is not money. Gold is a shiny metal that you can dig out of the ground that can be used as money. But so can a lot of things. The notion that gold is money and money is gold is simply a delusion. So while gold can be used as money, it has a lot of disadvantages.
What system collapsing? Countries began going off the gold standard eighty years ago. If blood in the streets was the inevitable result, wouldn’t we have noticed by now?
What’s actually happened is most countries have experience economic growth since going off the gold standard. This makes claims of certain doom seem a little unbelievable.
It’s pretty apt. Most people who argue for a gold standard are people who don’t have a broad enough knowledge of economics and history. Like a lot of fringe theories, a gold standard sounds plausible when it’s presented in isolation. But a wider awareness will start introducing the inconsistencies.
Given that the people who wrote the US Constitution had ample experience with paper money, seeing as that is essentially how the Continental Congress had just finished financing the Revolution, don’t you think that if they had thought it was a bad idea for the government to issue it they would have put something *specific *in the Constitution to prohibit it?
My argument is that gold is a better money than paper. So, once again:
If anyone wants to show how paper has outperformed gold in maintaining purchasing power or limiting the governments ability to manipulate the money supply, I will continue, otherwise have a great day. Been fun, well interesting anyway.
I understand your avoidance of trying to defend paper money, but I am limiting myself to this discussion. I have let you guys drag me off into multiple sideways conversations and there are just too many of you to continue. So, if we could stick to the meat and potatoes…