To: justshutupandtakeit; zechariah
Socialism has nothing to do with the form of the money supply unless you change the definitions of words to fit your argument.
But the opposition to the gold standard in any form -- from a growing number of welfare-state advocates -- was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Alan Greenspan (another "crackpot and know-nothing" according to Justshutupandtakeit)
109 posted on
04/14/2003 2:08:58 PM PDT by
AdamSelene235
(Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear....)
To: AdamSelene235
Greenspan is no more an advocate now of the gold standard than I am. Try another deception. His Randian delusions are things of the past. Ayn's monetary and economic theories are as simple minded as her novels. They are to Economics as her fiction is to great literature and her "philosophy" is to philosophy. Not to be taken seriously.
The problem with the GS standard is that it does not allow sufficient liquidity. That is the reason that western monetary history is a history of the attempts to get around it and provide a large enough money supply to keep the economy expanding.
Allowing a supersition to cause massive suffering and economic starvation is a thing of the past and it will never be resurrected. It never worked well anyway.
133 posted on
04/15/2003 8:36:38 AM PDT by
justshutupandtakeit
(RATS will use any means to denigrate George Bush's Victory.)
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