Cleveland Buck;922539 wrote: worthless paper dollars

Skyhook79;922796 wrote:Last week I gave a Ford dealership 15,000 dollars worth of worthless paper dollars and they gave me a brand new car in exchange, boy are they going to be pissed when they find out its worthless paper.

O-Trap;922667 wrote:Hot damn, I wish most the "republicans" in Washington thought this way.

believer;922897 wrote:Yeah, well, I never mentioned political party in my rant.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, both parties are responsible for the mess we're in but unfortunately the Repubs are the best bet to right the ship short of grassroots revolution.

O-Trap;923032 wrote:I guess this is where we disagree. I don't think most of the current crop on the Republican side would do any righting of the ship at all. Regardless of the pace, I don't think they'd help the country head in any better a direction than the current president. They may not take us the wrong way at the same speed, but it's still the wrong way.

If one of them goes against some of their talking points, and they end up proving me wrong, I'll be delighted. I just don't see more than maybe two (only one of whom has any chance at all) in any of the GOP debates whose open positions on matters are even solutions to the problems, let alone what they would actually do.

believer;923182 wrote:For me it's always of cutting my losses.

I can (a) vote for the status quo (in this case more inept Obama leadership) or (b) vote for the Repub candidate who would take us down the same path at the slower speed to which you referred or (c) vote for the inevitable third party candidate who talks the right game but has a snowball's chance of winning hence turning that vote into an indirect vote for more of Obama.

If we're going to head do down the abyss, I'd rather take my time about it.

believer;922421 wrote:I concur.

I believe the Federal government needs downsized and let the state and local governments be where our leftist friends attempt to implement their socialist agendas (if they can) as our Nation's Founders designed. In other words if Texas - for example - wants conservative governance so be it. If California wants a socialist government, so be it. Let the states decide what type of role government should have in people's lives as the Founders envisioned.

The Federal government's role should be reduced to what the Constitution allows (IE: National defense, national currency, foreign tariffs, international treaties, etc.). The Feds definitely shouldn't be in the business of regulating education at the local level, environmental policies, etc.

jhay78;923279 wrote:Republicans have only 1 or 2 more elections to straighten up before the third-party scenario becomes a reality for me. I see the whole Tea Party thing as a last-ditch effort to rescue the party from the RINO, establishment, beltway Republicans who made fun of Ronald Reagan until he won two landslides, and who are currently scared to death of us right-wing nutjobs.

I'm not ecstatic with the likes of Boehner, McConnell, etc., at this moment, but the real test of Republican resolve comes when (if?) they control the White House and both houses of Congress. If they blow another opportunity like that, then the RINO's can have their party and a third party becomes legitimate (if America as we know still has a pulse).

It's not one candidate or bust for me either. With the exception of Romney, who sounds like a Democrat criticizing any effort to reform SS, I could get behind and feel excited about most any of the other candidates.

stlouiedipalma;923297 wrote:Do you also believe that the conservative government of Texas can impose duty on products shipped out of Texas to other sovereign states? Or those products made (or grown) in the socialist state of California? You seem to want to give the states all of the responsibility, are you willing to allow them to take it to an extreme degree?

Cleveland Buck;923300 wrote:We probably don't have one or 2 more elections. If we elect Obama, Romney, Perry, Cain, Bachmann, or Gingrich we will continue to spend over a trillion dollars per year policing the world, and even more as they decide we need to invade Pakistan and Iran and Syria. It is impossible for us to cut Social Security and Medicare in a meaningful way, so just with that it is impossible for any of them to balance the budget even if they wanted to. Combine that with the fact that at some point interest rates will rise on our debt. The Fed can't hold them down forever. At some point they will ruin the dollar holding interest rates down, but after that they will go up anyway. When interest rates go up to 5% you double the annual budget deficit. When they go up to 10% interest payments take up every penny of federal revenue. If you think we can continue to police the world and still make meaningful cuts the budget you are absolutely wrong, and this country will be in worse shape than Greece in less than 10 years.

Not to mention they are preparing for this by stripping us of our personal liberties and rights in the Constitution. They know what will happen when people need garbage bags full of dollar bills to buy a loaf of bread or when the 1st of the month comes and no checks are in the mail. Our president is now our king and can have us assassinated at his whim, can detain us indefinitely without charges, can torture us. People don't understand that we don't have one or two more elections. We have this one. I don't want to guess what things will look like for the next one, if there is another one.

I Wear Pants;923311 wrote:Can someone remind me how switching to gold or silver vs the dollar would solve anything? It's one arbitrary object representing a certain amount of labor vs another. Calling it "worthless paper" is a trick to make the others seem like a better idea.

I Wear Pants;923311 wrote:Can someone remind me how switching to gold or silver vs the dollar would solve anything? It's one arbitrary object representing a certain amount of labor vs another. Calling it "worthless paper" is a trick to make the others seem like a better idea.

stlouiedipalma;923301 wrote:And what will your response be when the Democrats adopt the obstructionist methods perfected by the Senate Republicans, forcing or threatening filibusters at every step in the process?

Cleveland Buck;923323 wrote:Nothing represents a certain amount of labor. Money is a medium of exchange. If you know how to write software and you wants to buy a dozen eggs, instead of finding someone who has a dozen eggs and needs a program written, you write software for money and pay that money for the eggs. Throughout history there have been many different things used as money, but the main characteristics are that is has some value on it's own and it is scarce. If there is too much money chasing products and services then prices go up, and if the supply of money keeps growing then the money you earned loses its value.

Governments like paper money because they can create as much of it as they want to finance their agenda, caring little for the people who suffer because the money they earn can't buy what it used to.

Without trying to continue the history lesson, in one of the debates Ron Paul pointed out that you can buy a gallon of gas for a silver dime, which is what our coins were made of until the 1960s, and which is what a gallon of gas cost back then, about 10 cents. In other words, if our money was still based on gold and silver, we could still buy a gallon of gas for 10 cents.

When money is scarce it holds its value, doesn't destroy the poor and middle classes, and prevents the government from creating more money to monetize huge deficits which means they have to find someone to lend them money if they want to go to war or have a welfare state.

Skyhook79;923320 wrote:So unless Ron Paul and only Ron Paul is elected the Country will never have anther election?

I Wear Pants;923329 wrote:No, you couldn't.

Currency is a representation of labor/work/value.

stlouiedipalma;923312 wrote:Merely a hypothetical, Mr. Buck. I was taking believer's argument to the nth degree. When you cry out for what is essentially "states' rights" you must be prepared to address the "what ifs".

Besides, you can always find ways around Section 10.

I Wear Pants;923333 wrote:$1 of gold and $1 of paper money are exactly the same. We assign the same value to each and we use it to purchase labor or the results of labor with each.

And besides. No one wants to carry around a bunch of damned gold. So we then print paper money which is a representation of that gold which we use to represent a certain amount of labor or results of said labor (I want your burger which you say is worth two gold, I give you two gold).

What we use to facilitate trade is entirely arbitrary. Gold and silver aren't magic.