Gold Standard

[The Dark Lord]

This video pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6NfXk7Bvc8&feature=related

 

The US Dollar seems to be on a never-ending path of devaluation while we're on the flat money system.

 

Your thoughts?

[magekillr]

Oh god, here we go. The "RAUN PAUL REVOLUTION" never stops when it comes to the internet.

 

Of course we shouldn't return to the gold standard. The only people who wish to do this are Austrian Economists, who are more or less comparable to "New Age Medicine" doctors when compared to Western medicine; they're the quacks of their field. I shouldn't even call them economists, or their school a form of economics; none of it relies on any math, modeling, or evidence...just praxeology.

 

The beauty of fiat currency is that you have control over money supply, and can respond to shocks, recessions and depressions in a timely manner, if used appropriately.

 

Here's a good link:

 

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Politics/whynotthegoldstandard.html

 

And most of all: why would you want the dollar to be "valued" what it was all those years back? Our trade deficit is very high right now, and the cause for this trade deficit is an overvalued dollar, and inability to sell more than we produce. If the dollar was at that price, who would we trade with? No one, as no one could afford our products.

 

This gold-bug [cabbage] needs to end.

[Range_This11]

Our system needs to be stopped right now. There is absolutely no way to get out of debt to the central bank. I don't know if the gold standard is a good idea anymore, but surely the owners of the federal reserve and the private banking industry are never going to want anything but what's going on right now.

[l0rd]

Gold is a valuable resource, why the hell would we lock all of it up in a fortress somewhere?

 

Our current standard is much more practical. If you really wanted a standard, I'm sure geologists could suggest a different rare but not-precious material to use.

[Diesel]

Our system needs to be stopped right now. There is absolutely no way to get out of debt to the central bank. I don't know if the gold standard is a good idea anymore, but surely the owners of the federal reserve and the private banking industry are never going to want anything but what's going on right now.

 

Most non-Chicago University economists agree that having the National Debt increase close to GDP is perfectly fine. Yes, sometime down the line a loaf of bread will cost $100 due to inflation, but by then we'll already have gotten rid of cents and the 1 and 5 dollar bills and the money supply in circulation would allow it. Look at some cases of hyperinflation (Zimbabwe most recently), they just kept increasing the amount on bills. 100->1,000->10,000 and so on. Now imagine this happening over a span of a few hundred years and done in a much more manageable way.

 

Of course, if we increase the supply way high over the rate of GDP, look on the bright side, those old useless bills are cheap toilet paper!

 

On the topic of the gold standard, as long as consumers have faith in the current system, it won't fail. The supply is fairly stable. People aren't going to find an overwhelming mine of precious $100 bills like they may gold or some other precious substance. Imagine if that would happen under the gold standard. "Oh, so now my gold money is completely worthless because there's so much more of it now? Oh well." (Obviously this is an extreme example only trying to get a point across)

 

It's all about the controllable supply.

[indy500fan]

Also he is wrong during the part where he says he is not wrong and people who say that are wrong.

 

A convertible being made today on the gold standard would still cost as much as it costs now, the numbers are just different. If convertibles cost $1200 or whatever dollars that would be fine, that would also mean that the average median income would be around $1000 a year or so. That car is still going to cost around the annual salary of a lower middle class person, because that is what the car is worth. I'm not going to be able to work a month and then go out and buy that car outright because 160 hours of work =/= 1 convertible.

 

Also if I understand it correctly gold back currency would require gold to collected and held in banks to back the currency. Gold has uses in many electronics because of it's conductivity, and all that sitting in a bank somewhere is basically useless. Fiat currency is backed by the government, and it obviously shouldn't be printed off whenever because that would cause inflation. But it's not a bad idea, it is backed by what the government is worth. So what is backed by is actually being used rather than just sitting there.

 

EDIT: And the extreme national debt that we have right now is big, but not really that bad. It just looks much worse than it is because of the extremely large economy that we have.

[la la la]

Richard Nixon was great as a president. As a good, honest person? No.

[Earth_Poet]

lol. I got thirty seconds into the video and was bombarded with misinformation and, from the best I could tell, made-up facts. I do agree that our current monetary policy is dysfunctional, but returning to the gold standard would be economic suicide for our government.

[Giordano]

This guy's voice sounds familiar...familiar as in those YouTube "current event bloggers" that get their info from news lines articles and conspiracy websites.

 

As for the actual gold standard vs. dollar, for what little I understand of it, would prefer to use the dollar because it creates an "artificial" economy not based on real world objects; similar to money in banks (it's not phyiscal money, but numbers in a computer).

[fakeitormakeit2]

We cannot return to the gold standard. It would be restrictive on our economy, as well as it would be us purposely reducing the value of our currency because countries we send aid money to have a tendency to purchase gold from the US gov. so in turn we'd be paying to reduce ourselves (well we are already doing that, but it would be even worse).

 

And saying that because we took ourselves off the gold standard is why our currency has been constantly decreasing is the logical fallicy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Our economy profited heavily from the European wars were European nations had to buy American resources to fight each other, and now that Europe has a continental peace since WW2 and more over since after the fall of the USSR, our economy is falling as we cannot compete because we've lost our edge.