Ron Paul and Why Sound Money Matters
Of all the issues that people attack Ron Paul for, the one they make the most fun of is his desire to return to sound money. That is very sad. It shows just how ill informed the American populace is about the danger of fiat money and why it was banned by the Constitution. Our founders knew better, we have forgotten.
To fully explore the issue takes entire books such as What has Government Done to our Money? by Rothbard and The Creature From Jekyll Island by Griffin and others. Very basically, fiat money is paper money that is not backed by anything. You cannot turn it into the government and get gold for it or silver, the way you used to be able to when we had silver certificates instead of Federal Reserve Notes. I know, this is kind of boring stuff, but bear with me.
When fiat, or paper money is created no one wants to accept it. Why should they? You might as well ask them to take payment in Monopoly money. So, to fix that problem, the government creates legal tender laws FORCING anyone who is doing business to accept these worthless pieces of paper as actual money. Why do such a thing? Because that way - and here is where it gets very interesting - they can tax you as much as they want without your knowledge. If the government wants more war, it has to pay for it. War is expensive. You cannot tax the people for it or they will get really angry and not support your war. So, the government "prints" more money. (Actually, more complex mechanisms than a printing press are used, but the concept is the same). The more money that gets "printed" out of thin air, the more the value of the money in your pocket gets diluted.
Think about it. If tomorrow the entire money supply in the country doubled, we would have twice as many paper dollars chasing the same amount of goods. Prices in the economy would double and each dollar would be worth half as much as it once was. You wouldn't have any more buying power than. When the government prints extra dollars, it makes the ones in your pocket right now worth less which is why prices keep rising and no matter how hard you work, you are barely breaking even. Of course, they keep printing more, but you don't wake up with double the money in your pocket so things are really bad for you.
This "inflation tax" is what is causing most of us to feel the economic pinch right now. Right now one main reason things are so tough on you financially is because the government is spending up to one trillion dollars a year on the military. Guess who is paying for that? Us. Guess when? Now and in the future when we will have to pay interest on even more loans the government took out. The government has no money of its own, it only gets what it takes from you and me. And they have been taking a lot of it. We just haven't seen it directly coming out of our pockets in the form of taxes in our paycheck, but we sure feel it when it costs over fifty bucks to fill the tank, or milk is five bucks a gallon, or your cat food goes from 7.99 to 12.99 in three months. Right now the prices are rising because the value of the dollar is dropping.
That is why we cannot afford to keep this empire building going. We can't afford it. I know my cost of living is going down and I am scared about the future, how about you? How much lower can you afford the dollar to drop?
Ron Paul, the one we all keep talking about, has a solution for this: eliminate the government's monopolistic control of the money supply; introduce competition by repealing legal tender laws; and let free people in the free market offer alternatives to the federal reserve notes we are forced to use now. Given the choice, I think we would rather use money that is actually backed by something of value. The idea might seem radical but if you give it some thought the truly strange notion is to trade goods for worthless pieces of paper. Switching to sound money is our only way out of the "inflation" tax and keeping the government's paws off our wallets. It only sounds odd because we are not used to the idea. What is really awful for most of us in the middle and lower classes is that the other candidates won't even entertain the idea. The less you make, the more this "tax" affects you. When you live paycheck to paycheck every dollar counts.
If you want to wake up in the morning with your money being worth what it was when you went to sleep, then open your eyes America. Vote for Ron Paul! All the other candidates make fun of him for wanting to protect your money. They actually laugh at him. Well, they are really laughing at you, the public, because they know they can continue to rob you blind as long as they want. Fight back. You have a choice!
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to
regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and
shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned
- this is the sum of good government. "
Thomas Jefferson
