“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

http://www.constitution.org/mon/greenspan_gold.htm

Gold is scarce, that is, the supply is generally limited. If you want more gold, you have to work hard for it, you can’t easily just make more. If you could easily just make more, then gold would be worthless.

You CAN easily just print more paper money; so paper money is worthless. If you back a paper money with gold, then that paper money will be worth the same as gold.

I don’t think it’s because they don’t understand. It’s because they don’t KNOW!

Those who want a fiat currency suggest that there isn’t enough gold in the world to support a large economy, but 99% of the world’s wealth isn’t held in fiat currency either! It is in fiat-currency-denominated assets, obligations, and other instruments. Money is only used in the course of purchases and other transactions where it speedily is converted into other transactions to support other transactions.

Inflation is like a regressive tax that mostly harms the poor. Inflation is the product of having fiat money. Progressives everywhere should re-examine their support for fiat money and central banks.

To the author of the article — Only Ron Paul has the sense to talk about sound money. For decades he has talked about the devaluing dollar. He has been correct. How is being correct about something “crazy?” Ron Paul refers not just to history, wherein every empire which ever existed has debased its currency to support its boondoggle empire, but also to economics, where he is an expert in the Austrian school of free market economics espoused by Ludwig von Mises and Freidrich Hayek. (Please read “The Road to Serfdom,” by Hayek.)

I do not see how allowing a competing currency backed by gold or silver, as Ron Paul proposes, is in any way a bad idea. Competition is always a good thing. If people choose to do business using pieces of paper “backed” by a printing press instead of currency that is backed by precious metal, they can do so. I think you would find that the fiat currency would be quickly abandoned — by all of us “crazy” Americans.

Only Ron Paul is willing to discuss the folly that is the insane war on drugs — which is actually a war on civil liberties and which creates a black market which funds the very terrorists that the candidates who support the war on drugs claim to be fighting. The prohibition on medical marijuana and industrial grade hemp (which even Canadians can grow!), are especially egregious.

Government can only give away what it first takes away. Ron Paul’s plan to eliminate the income tax is very pro-growth and has the moral high ground. It is, after all, OUR money. Every government program is a parasite on the productive economy. We can eliminate the income tax by cutting spending to levels of the year 2000. We would save billions of dollars on compliance costs (to say nothing of stress.) Canada benefits from having the strongest economy in the world next door to it. The economic growth in America would spill into Canada.

I am tired of hearing the media repeat, like a drum beat, attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, that Ron Paul cannot win. History shows that many candidates who are polling low before Iowa and New Hampshire DO win. How quickly they forget. (Or how CONVENIENTLY they forget.) The polls are meaningless because they ask respondents whether they are likely voters. The vast majority of respondents say “Yes,” but we know from experience that only a fraction of those people actually vote. So, intensity of support becomes more important and Ron Paul clearly has far more intensity of support than any other candidate. Ron Paul’s supporters WILL vote.

He is also the only candidate who can outflank the Democrats on the war issue and the health care issue, as he is a doctor. The Democrats know this. The Republicans who think that Rudy Giuliani can beat Hillary Clinton are delusional. Giuliani is unlikely to even deliver New York state in a head-to-head competition between himself and Carpetbagger Clinton. How could he possibly defeat her if he can’t win his own state?

Ron Paul is the most sensible candidate running. Our military personnel seem to agree. They send him more donations than any other candidate in any party.

Peace, Prosperity, Freedom. Ron Paul in 2008. The ONLY rational choice.