Rick Reuben wrote:If an expanding federal government is the antidote to the concentration of wealth at the top, why has it done such a poor job of it, ever since Bretton Woods was abandoned in 1973 and the dollar became pure fiat?

I'm sure you can find a similar chart that reflects the same result if the inheritance tax was fully repealed, which Paul supports by the way.

That will just create another way to hoard wealth and sustain an "ad hoc monarchy" as the creators of that tax warned us against.

But hey, the beneficiaries "earned" all of that cash, right? Just ask any DuPont.

-A

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:Rick, have you read this?

Forgive me for quoting myself before you have a chance to reply, but how is Ron Paul going to fix the debt that America has?
Also, please forgive me if this has already been answered, but this thread is over 50 pages long and kind of hard to sort through.

Rick Reuben wrote:What facts?

Points that have not so been addressed as yet by the pro-Gold clique:

-the fact that most nations now use a "fiat", and it works fine. Your only answer to this was the ridiculously nationalist idea that all the central banks of the world, Bank of England included, are run by the super-rich American elite.

-the fact that in order to establish a commodity based currency the currency value of the chosen commodity would have to be indexed against other commodities.

-the fact that the dollar value has to be selected. As outline by Paul in his little toy "manifesto" for the gold standard. Who are you going to select for this job, Ron Paul personally or someone from an organisation you believe run by the illuminati/free masons?

-the fact that the central storage and monitoring of the gold supply would be infinitely more centralised and monopolised than any fiat system you might conceive. When the NWO arrives, you guys aren't going to be able to pull out your ingots from under the bed and trot down to Mad Uncle Ezekiel's Home Security And Civil War Recreation Emporium and cash them in for rifles and bulletproof vests. Who keeps the gold?

Wow! Greenspan likes the Gold Standard! Congratulations, you found someone even less worthy of respect than Ron Paul to back up your argument.

Rick Reuben wrote: ( Good job blowing your top and then returning to a thread on a candidate you wrote off in August, BTW- what did that 'final straw' last? 5 days? Then you return here and resume directing all your questions to me- the man you say knows nothing. Is it boring in the Hillary thread? Isn't Nerbly's 'Ron Paul Hates You' thread a cool place? )

You're one to talk.
As seen here, repeatedly, over many pages:

(p)Rick Ruben wrote:this is my final post

I'll tell you what, you go ahead and run along, as promised, and I'll promise never to post anything about Ron Paul here again. In the meantime, I may jump in from time to time when somebody else brings up a good point, and not some tinfoil hat bullshit like you do.

My question about how Paul feels about radio consolidation was addressed to the board, and I think it was a good one, considering how Libertarians feel about it. The media has been bad to the guy, but my guess is that he wouldn't get in the way of consolidation, because that's in line with how Libertarians think. That's an interesting conflict, potentially.
President Paul is one third of any equation, so he's not as neutered as you make him out to be.

I thought it might prompt something that's been sadly lacking here: thoughtful discussion.
Naturally you fucked it up before anyone else could comment.

-A

nfurnier wrote:So people are too stupid to know what they want or need? To me that is an authoritarian view...that we must be told what is good for us.

You're the one saying that people needs to be told what's good for them. I am not saying this, or drawing that conclusion.

What I'm saying is that advertising is not rational information. Good advertising appeals to base emotions rather than the intellect. It does this because it's the most efficient method of making people perform the required actions (namely, buy the products).

I am not arguing that rationality is a good or bad thing or that humans need to be "guided" by authority if their rationality is lacking. What I'm saying is that free-market theory falls flat because whatever human economic rationality there is finds itself incapacitated by psychological techniques employed by corporations, and specifically the whole psychological milieu (in regards to values and communication) that all advertising collectively creates in the public space.

"Homo economicus" requires a rational agent. Advertising and other psychological techniques incapacitates this rational agent.

Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote: most nations now use a "fiat", and it works fine.

Sorry, dave- back in the troll box you go. Why don't you predict that none of us on the forum will ever die, because we're all walking around today? Current life does not predict perpetual life. Someone like you will remain too thick to recognize failing currency until he sees Weimar levels of inflation.

Stop name-dropping Weimar. That was a post war economy structured to compensate for reperation payment, which is not the same as the debt you are describing. Pretty irrelevant aside from gawk-inducing photographs of someone stoking a fire with banknotes or giving them to children to play with. The Weimar cycle of inflation took less than a decade, whereas we are coming up to the century birthday of the Fed.

Let me dismiss a little bit of your reasoning here:

1) you claim that current slowing USA is because of the fiat currency, which is designed by the bankers to end up bankrupting the nation with hyper inflation.

2) most nations use the same fiat/central bank system as the USA so we should expect all nations with economic ties to the US to be suffering just as hard as you guys if it is indeed "by design", considering that there is more economic turbulance in the UK due to changes in government and a very young currency.

3) only the UK is experiencing something similiar to the USA, and in the UK its comparitively mild and traceable to two other causes, one of which is the UK investment in the US credit market and investment returning to "material" goods and industry.

4) therefore we can assume its not the fiat currency that is responsible for the suffering economy, maybe its something more obvious, like the fact that your douchebag head of state is spending billions on an unwinnable war and drug prohibition and your service and production industries are being outsourced at an epic pace due to lax/neo-liberal financial policies and de-regulation. How about that for a reason instead. That is before we get into the historical unpleasantness (i.e. facts) that most european nations graduated to fiat autonomously without the aid of super-rich americans with Jewish last names.

Please killfile me again, thanks. The word "work" is present tense, btw.

larsxe wrote:What I'm saying is that advertising is not rational information. Good advertising appeals to base emotions rather than the intellect. It does this because it's the most efficient method of making people perform the required actions (namely, buy the products).

It's something in the neighborhood of 80% of our reactions are based on emotion and 20% on reason. So if someone doesn't want to pay taxes, 80% of the time people will call them selfish and the other 20% will be spent engaging economic theory. Economics is a science that can't be bantered about with gut reactions to arrive at any sane position. You get into messageboard piss matches and it's pretty much all emotion.

I understand and agree with what you are saying about advertising but there isn't any way to counter this manipulation other than to point it out. Nobody should argue that free markets are perfect, just that they yield better results long term and are not authoritarian compared to regulated ones.

Stopping the printing of money is a great idea.
Seriously, I firmly agree with that stance of Ron Paul's campaign.
I think getting rid of income tax is retarded.
I think there should be more taxes, but it should be done on a scale.
The poor should pay less and the rich should pay infinitely more.
I also think that any company that has outsourced job should pay 25% of their profits to the U.S. for the next five years and if they haven't moved production facilities back to the U.S. by that time, then they should be heavily tariffed (50% of their profits) until they bring the jobs back.

Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote: therefore we can assume its not the fiat currency that is responsible for the suffering economy, maybe its something more obvious, like the fact that your douchebag head of state is spending billions

God, you're dumb. 'billions'??? Billions of what, you idiot? Billions of fiat dollars, which pile up debt for future generations. Who accomodates every demand for new deficit spending, shitbrain? The Federal Reserve.

You are brain damaged beyond belief if you think you found a different explanation for the state of the economy, because you didn't- in your own words, you confirmed what I've been saying for 54 pages.

Basically you agree with me up until the point where your Fed-related conspiracy kicks in, then we divurge. Fine.

We agree that there is a debt related crisis to come, but disagree on three points. Firstly, that it is the currency's fault and not your irresponsible rich-favouring government. Next, that this crisis will be an Amero-inducing armageddon rather than another in a series of financial problems. And finally, that the crisis was deliberate, and planned years ago.

If that's the case, punk is dead and I spit on its corpse.