” One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first acts as president was to take the United States off the gold standard in 1933.”
I don’t know if that is accurate. Gold was revoked as legal tender and revalued from just over $20/oz to $35, but a gold standard remained for foreign exchange purposes. That eroded during the Kennedy and Johnson years and it was Nixon who ended the last vestiges of the gold standard in 1971.
But the author is right that politicians resented being handcuffed by a gold standard. In its place they stuck the American people with a depreciating dollar.
If anything, Mr. Sowell is being polite, and thus not accurate enough.
What FDR did was a crime, because America was on a gold _coin_ standard. In fact the largest stock of gold coin in world history ever circulated in the US. And the government basically stole it, in exchange for pieces of paper.
Now all the economists will argue that there isn’t enough gold to satisfy commerce, that an “elastic” currency is necessary, without the constraints imposed by gold. And, they might be right. It is also true however, that the latest economic collapse is a result of EXACTLY what the framers warned us about with respect to paper currencies.
There is a steady, obvious decline in property rights, freedom, and independence, rule of law, human rights, in the ensuing decades all attributable in part to “funny money” that can be printed (borrowed, even, at interest) by governments to effect their designs and generally without or against the desires of the people. Consent of the governed? From a read of history, it looks like debt peonage or serfdom is in the cards. Oh well.
Gold isn’t really the answer but it is for damn sure part of the question - why does the citizen have no representation in government? It is plain to anybody paying attention Jefferson’s admonishment is coming true - waking up on a continent our forefathers conquered and finding it stolen right from under our feet. It isn’t an accident or result of incompetent or inept leadership, it is careful DESIGN.