Testing The Financial Apologists

My whole point is this:

Gold *is* money. The value of gold is not solely determined by the proclamation of any national government but by the market. My whole beef with progressives is their obsessive meddling and control over people's money and transactions. And you say the other guys are authoritarians? Wake up and smell the coffee!

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And if this social democratic government ever tries any of that confiscation crap that FDR pulled, they may well start a civil war. Were I a wealthy individual, I would simply move elsewhere.

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Finally, regarding the rich being the solution to the debt, the entire net value of ALL of the Forbes 400 is just shy of 5 trillion.
SOURCE: The wealthiest people in the U.S. are as wealthy as ever. Thus, even if the 400 richest families gave 100% of their net worth to Uncle Sam, it would make a very small dent in the overall debt.

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Finally...

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Regarding the 5 rogue states that wanted to make gold on par with federal reserve notes, we all know that the underlying reason is to attempt to eliminate the 28% Capital Gains taxes.

Can you name anything that is traded between humans or human organizations where the value is not determined by the market? So demanding that everyone pays THEIR FAIR SHARE for the benefits they receive is authoritarian? My whole beef with conservatives is their obsession with giving our tax money to millionaires and billionaires (ABE1: who think they deserve it, just because they're rich) as if it is a legitimate government expense! ABE2: And you never seem to wonder why our military budget is multiple time more than the rest of the world combined or why every red state gets more federal money than they pay in taxes or question the redistribution of wealth that's been republican policy since the Reagan tax cuts.Yep, we think a former president talking about locking up his political opponents and EVERYONE who criticizes him, executing the generals who pointed out his insanity and literally thousands of other acts against citizens is authoritarian. YOU ARE ADVOCATING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BECOME A FUCKING POLICE STATE!How the fuck do you think your finances will do then?That would be great. And Congress should pass a law that you can NEVER do business in the United States again. No one is advocating the ultra wealthy PAY OFF THE DEBT, but if they PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE their fucking tax cuts will not be causing the debt to explode and U.S. government borrowing will be considerably less, why the budget might even be balanced. None of the progressives you hate so much are supporting that as a solution to the debt. They will still be the 400 richest families after they pay THEIR FAIR SHARE FOR THE BENEFITS THEY RECEIVE!And we all know that capital gains taxes should be at a much higher rate.

So nothing like what Phat proposes?

Sometimes there is a difference between desire and reality.

If you were wealthy -- and I'm treating that as past tense rather than subjunctive -- by now you would be back to relatively poor. Because you would have been ripped of by the many grifters that you listen too.And you would not have enough remaining wealth to move anywhere.

You will need to define subjunctive to him.

Why is your message subtitle, "Government should butt out of assigning value to precious metals"? Not only does no government in the world have that power, your message doesn't even remotely touch on that issue anyway. You have made the point you're about to make over and over and over again. People have responded and for the most part you ignore what they say and make your point all over again. I'm an idiot for responding. Gold is a commodity. You can trade gold for goods, but you can also trade platinum, oil and lumber for goods. Other than its history as currency, there's nothing special about gold in world financial systems. Yes, like any commodity. You keep saying stuff like this, and we can only guess that you're repeating accusations from YouTube videos and other sources of similar information. If by "other guys" you mean the Republicans (and they mostly seem to be MAGA Republicans at the moment) then yes, absolutely, the other guys are the authoritarians. We don't have a social democratic government. Bernie Sanders is not president. More than half of Congress is Republican. Two thirds of the Supreme Court are conservatives. I assume you're referring to when FDR mandated that citizens had to turn their gold over to the federal government. It's absurd to raise this as a possibility today.But it might be worth describing what FDR actually did. He was the one who put us on the gold standard. Most people think that we were on the gold standard from our founding right up until 1971, but that's not true. Prior to 1933 the dollar was only defined in terms of gold, meaning that the dollar was worth so many ounces of gold (about a twentieth of an ounce at the time). The U.S. kept sufficient gold on hand to honor redemption requests.But after 1933 the dollar was backed by gold, meaning that the U.S. promised that for each dollar in circulation there was a dollar of gold in secure storage. That's why FDR confiscated all the gold in private hands, because the government needed it to back the amount of currency in circulation. They assumed there would always be enough gold to back all the currency the economy required because the economy was expected to grow very slowly. The Depression heavily influenced economic expectations.The post WWII economic boom quickly proved that there was insufficient gold in the world to back all the currencies. Backing currencies with gold become more and more untenable and in 1971 Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard, ending the 37 year experiment begun by FDR. How do you manage to keep misunderstanding what is being said. Is this from your inane YouTube videos again? You're not by chance listening to Alex Jones, are you?No one is suggesting that the rich should be milked to pay off the national debt. In fact, it isn't even the Democrats (or, as you insist on erroneously calling them, "progressives" or "social democrats") who are suggesting that we need to pay down the national debt. The Democrats are suggesting that we employ economic policies that allow the economy to grow faster than the national debt. It's the nut job Republicans who keep arguing for paying down the national debt. That's why they keep holding the government hostage with shutdown threats.Concerning the rich, what Democrats are actually proposing (and keep in mind I'm not a Democrat - I'm just trying to accurately represent their views, the opposite of what you're doing) is that the rich pay their fair share in taxes. A first step might be to reverse Trump's actions that granted the rich higher tax cuts than everyone else. Including you. Warren Buffet's taxes, Jeff Bezos' taxes, Elon Musk's taxes, they all went down more percentage-wise than yours. Capisce? Not remotely what anyone is suggesting. The states cannot affect federal income tax rates, but the long term capital gains tax rate is actually only 20% at most. If you're single then it's 0% up to $44,625, 15% up to $492,300, and 20% over that.--Percy

Great then take a bar of it down to your store and try to buy yourself some diapers, see how far you get.

Have you ever had a capital gain? Do you know what a capital gain is?

The very fact that we all disagree is what makes EvC a lively place. The comment that sparked my reaction was from jar.
Message 614It brought to mind the inane thing that FDR did in 1933 by confiscating all of the gold held by the public and, a year later, the silver as well. As I have stated before, I am no fan of big government though to be fairr FDR did a bangup job for 4 terms. World War II was won in part because of the cooperation between government and business.Thankfully Gerald Ford made it legal to own gold again after we took the silver out of our coins in 1964 and separated the gold backing from the dollar.My point is that the global backing (not just the national one) never really went away.One cannot have a fiat money system without any solid backing.Or perhaps critics suggest that the paper is backed by the people. If we digitize the currency and coinage we could also digitize the people so that their backing was solidly and forever linked. (some of you know where I got that idea)

Fair enough. I have regrets. I also have many wishes. Reality favors no one but the wise will somehow survive.

Do you mean global backing of currency with gold? There was only an international gold standard for 40 years. It was dropped because it inhibited economic growth. Many economists have pointed out the gold standard was one of the causes of the Great Depression.
Gold standard - Wikipedia
You should actually read stuff. Start with wikipedia then follow sources. NAh, you might actually learn something, and we know you have no interest in that. Equivocating again? Define solid backing. "Full faith and credit" of the United States of America seems to be pretty solid. And the stupid continues.Why don't you actually address what other people say? You dont even address the comment you quoted.
How will a gold standard work? Do you think trillions of dollars should be taken out of the economy because there is not enough gold to back it? Do you have any plan to implement such a plan?

The history is irrelevant. The fact remains that your message subtitle was completely unrelated to the message itself. How can you keep getting this wrong in post after post. The very definition of fiat money is that is has no backing. Maybe this will aid your understanding:

• Commodity money: made of a precious metal
• Partial commodity money: some coins contain at least some precious metal (used less and less until eliminated in 1971)
• Representative money: redeemable by a precious metal (what we had until 1933)
• Backed money: currency in circulation is matched by a precious metal of equal value (or more) in secure storage (what we attempted from 1933 to 1971)
• Fiat money: no backing (what we've had since 1971)

A random money-related thought just occurred to me. I've been hoping for the elimination of the penny for some time now, but I just realized I haven't thought about this in a few years. It doesn't matter anymore because so many transactions are digital.--Percy

Does your lack of basic knowledge not concern you? How do you think you can adequately comment on complex issues like the scientific method and economics when you don't even know basic grammar and tenses of verbs?
You don't even understand the point nwr was making.

I assumed he meant precious metals by "solid backing" because he's usually arguing the opposite of what he just said, that fiat currencies have no backing. But maybe you're right and he meant something else.But even bankrupt countries have fiat currencies. Sri Lanka's rupee, the world's "worst performing currency" according to the Financial Times, is worth a third of cent right now, but it is still used as the medium of exchange within Sri Lanka. Analogous to what you said about the U.S. dollar, the Sri Lankan rupee is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the Sri Lankan government, which isn't much.--Percy