please don't post again, thanks! you're clearly at worst a liar and at best purposefully ignorant and Ron Paul will never get elected, he was an awful racist candidate, you all wasted your money by supporting him, and thank god for that. it's no longer relevant and all you did was make everyone realize you are an awful idiotic human being.

Its been a week, so I might have just left this topic be.  But seeing as how your so full of crap and full of yourself, I figured what the heck.

This material was published by writers other then Paul.
no they weren't, no writer ever stepped forward, no writer was ever disclosed, the "writers" had the odd and queer foresight to write as if he was Paul many many times, he hired the man distributing his letters for his campaign, and in 1990 he claimed authorship of them by saying they were academic tongue in cheek quotes. and if all if this was untrue it doesn't change the fact that this is just criminally irresponsible and he shouldn't be President if he can't check racism in a small newsletter he's been running for decades that he signs off on personally.

Why would the actual writer come forward when it would obviously destroy his or her public image?  You act as if the writers unwillingness to expose himself to the public is somehow proof that Ron Paul wrote these articles.

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This is just criticism of the TSA.
exclusionary, buddy, it was a racist criticism of the TSA.

Precisely how is it racist or exclusionary.  Ron Paul merely mentioned the TSA, he mentioned nothing of the particular race or creed of the TSA members.

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What Ron Paul voted against was a bill called House Resolution 676, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, not the renewal of the Civil Rights Act, because he wished to expressed grievances over the additional regulation of businesses that resulted.
ah yes this is so much better when you vote against a celebration because it stopped people from kicking out niggers.

There is a big difference between providing some criticism during the celebration of the civil rights act and voting against the act itself.

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This is a minor change in the IRS's ability to evaluate private schools, it is difficult to tell what the actual effect would without more background and the portion of IRS code this is effecting.
the effect would be that private schools could now discriminate and the IRS can't check them on it, thanks for playing.

The last time I checked, it was not the IRS's responsiblility to enforce discrimination laws, so it does not follow that private schools would suddenly be able to discriminate.

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This is a prohibition against forced busing, no problems here.
the Civil Rights Act and the "forced busing" was the only way people could stop racists like Paul from preventing them from getting their rights. don't say no problems. I and every minority have a huge problem with repealing it.

Forced busing has never been necessary to desegregate schools.  Forced busing allows the states school system to force children to attend distant schools as oppose to local schools.  The principle behind desegregation should be to allow students to attend the school of their choice, not to shuffle kids around over huge distances in order to produce the demographics politicans desired.  The basis for racial policy should be to treat children of all races like human beings, not to shuffle them around like pawns in order to create the appearance of racial integration.  Not to mention, it rather sucks for a kid who has to spend 1-2 hours each day making round trips to distant schools.

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For a pro-life candidate, this is about as reasonable as a pro-life bill is going to get.
for a libertarian its completely ridiculous and an infringement on a woman's rights.

Nobody ever said Ron Paul was a libertarian, he is merely closer than the other candidates.

Furthermore, even libertarians recognize limited government authority.  We obviously believe that the government has the authority to prevent murder, so any libertarian who was convinced that abortion is murder might find restricting abortion acceptable.  Also, as long as it is still accepted that their are some curtails on the liberties of minors until they become adults(which there currently are), this could also be deemed acceptable on these grounds. 

Ultimately, this particular position does not restrict liberty, but only privacy.  As it stands, the legal guardians of children can abrige their childrens privacy under most circumstances anyway.

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The bill in this link does appears to be entirely different from what is described here.
no it isn't. glad to see you've bought into the jargon of the estate tax instead of the reality and figured out something every single political economic theorist hasn't though. you sure are a clever one.

There are plenty of theorist out their who have postulated the same effect.  Besides, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that if 50% of your businesses assets are seized, the business might go under.

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No, he is merely ensuring that the state's retain authority over marriage license. The state's are currently responsible for marriage license, and have also shown a greater willingness to accept gay marriages than the federal government, which the religious right as been attempting to use to block gay marriages. So protecting the states from federal courts may actually be helpful towards gay rights.
except the greatest help to gay rights is to be for gay marriage. the bill anulls marriages as soon as they cross state lines. this is not helpful to gay rights at all.

Its better that gays have rights in at least a few states than no states at all.  And the regions in which gay rights will be accepted will expand as more state governments are convinced to legalize gay marriages.  At the moment, I see few individuals in power willing to grant gays the right to marry on the federal level.

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Being a Christian, he believes life begins a conception. The link you provided provides no evidence for the other claims.
as a libertarian he has an obligation to fight for all rights, even ones he dislikes, and yes it does, you clearly have no idea what removing judicial review would do.

Again, he is not a true libertarian, only the closest to being a libertarian.

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Incidentally, this is also the bill that defines the civil war in Sudan as a genocide, perhaps he considered it just a civil war and not genocide.
you clearly didn't read the link, where he explained his horrible motives for giving government funds to Sudan.

Horribly reasons?  The link just sends you to a site that list voting records. 

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The U.N. has an annoying habit of pulling us into wars we do not need to be in.
as a member of the ruling seven the US has the right to not follow any UN action and frequently goes over the UN's head. once again, you demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge on the subject.

So, better to join the U.N. and then defy it(or dominate it) then to not join it and simply retain peaceful relations with other nations?

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We could use money that will retain its value.will destroy the economy according to every major economic thinker that isn't hilariously out of date.

There are actually a great deal of economist that believe that we should return to the gold standard.  Furthermore, the sustained inflation that we have been suffering the end of the gold standard cannot be denied.

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Some criticism of particular ideologies being pushed on college students, but nothing about U.N. mind control.way to be exclusionary

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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a concurrent resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO sponsors the International Baccalaureate program, which seeks to indoctrinate US primary and secondary school students through its ``universal curriculum'' for teaching global citizenship, peace studies and equality of world cultures. This program, started in Europe, is infiltrating the American school system.

U.N. Mind Control isn't even mentioned in this quote.  He wants to pull out of UNESCO, but we already knew that because he wants to pull out of the UN.

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That is the general idea.will destroy society according to every major political thinker that isn't hilariously out of date.

Really?  Abolishing the federal department of education will destroy society, even though the states are the ones who are essentially responsible for paying for and running the educational system?  And EVERY major political thinker who is in date has said that?  I suppose you checked.  Oh, and the disapperance social security, despite the fact that it did not even exist for most of U.S. history, will result in the destruction of society.  Oddly enough, often when I am presented with the thoughts of political thinkers, it sounds like social security is on the path to its own destruction.

Perhaps these absurb sweeping generalization backed by no evidence should be avoided.

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that inflation and deflation are positive and negative changes in the consumer price index respectively:

1.) The price deflation that is so often mentioned as a cause of the Great Depression did not happen until after the market crash of 1929 and the Depression began. Furthermore, the United States was actually accumulating gold during that time, meaning that the price deflation after 1929 was the result of the Federal Reserve removing federal reserve notes from circulation.

2.) Prior to the 1920s, their was a huge surge in the consumer price index, which rose from 9.9 in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created to 20.0 in 1920. During the 1920s, their was a contraction in prices for the first two years, but then in remained relatively constant around 17.1 until the market crash of 1929. Therefore, the volatile 1920s followed a massive expansion in credit during the 1910s, and despite a two year contraction, prices during this time were nearly twice as high as in 1913. Therefore, any claims in regard to the Great Depression being a result of prior deflation simply are not true, because with the exception of 1920-1922, deflation was not even taking place, and the 1920-1922 are minor compared to inflation occuring during the 1910s.

3.) The Federal Reserve obviously had plenty of power to expand the money supply despite the gold standard, seeing as how in managed to double the consumer price index in less then a decade.

Below is a table I obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics containing the data I am describing:

Year CPI

1913 9.9
1914 10.0
1915 10.1
1916 10.9
1917 12.8
1918 15.1
1919 17.3
1920 20.0
1921 17.9
1922 16.8
1923 17.1
1924 17.1
1925 17.5
1926 17.7
1927 17.4
1928 17.1
1929 17.1
1930 16.7
1931 15.2
1932 13.7
1933 13.0
1934 13.4
1935 13.7
1936 13.9
1937 14.4
1938 14.1
1939 13.9
1940 14.0
glad to see you think you know more about economics than Dr. J. Bradford Delong, a Harvard educated economics professor who taught at Harvard, Boston University, MIT, and currently teaches at Berkeley and all these people:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GoldStandard.html -Dr. Michael D. Bordo, London School of Economics, currently teaching at Rutgers
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2005/12/the_gold_standa.html -James D. Hamilton, Professor of Economics at University of California
and pretty much everyone else, such as professor Barry J. Eichengreen who wrote the fantastic Golden Fetters, who has ever published a paper on the subject. ps: EVERYONE ELSE. there are no serious economists advocating a return to the gold standard (cue Greenspan namedrop).

regardless, no doubt you will be angry that I suggested you have zero credibility compared to a man who taught at MIT and Harvard and got his PhD from the top university in the country instead of refuting your arguments but let's give it a shot.

Well excuse me for attempting to present some facts and evidence.  I merely presented a couple of basic facts.  I did not know that presenting arguments on this forum is automatically considered a direct challenge to every economist every who might have been critical of the gold standard.

Besides, there are some impressive individuals who would like to see the gold standard restored, such Dr. Robert Lucas and Dr. Robert Mundell, both of whom hold the Nobel Prize in Economics and are widely regarded as the experts in their field.  Does you rejection of the gold standard mean that you believe you are smarter are more learned than these individuals?

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1.) The price deflation that is so often mentioned as a cause of the Great Depression did not happen until after the market crash of 1929 and the Depression began. Furthermore, the United States was actually accumulating gold during that time, meaning that the price deflation after 1929 was the result of the Federal Reserve removing federal reserve notes from circulation.
by being stuck to the gold standard (if you read the link you'd know this), the Federal Reserve was unable to prevent the Great Depression. runs on the dollar resulted in the crash, and had the dollar not been tied to such a horrible (arbitrary) standard, it would have never happened.

I couldn't help but notice that for two centuries, are country had no federal reserve, and yet we had nothing like the Great Depression, despite the fact that their existed no federal reserve to step in a stop it.

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2.) Prior to the 1920s, their was a huge surge in the consumer price index, which rose from 9.9 in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created to 20.0 in 1920. During the 1920s, their was a contraction in prices for the first two years, but then in remained relatively constant around 17.1 until the market crash of 1929. Therefore, the volatile 1920s followed a massive expansion in credit during the 1910s, and despite a two year contraction, prices during this time were nearly twice as high as in 1913. Therefore, any claims in regard to the Great Depression being a result of prior deflation simply are not true, because with the exception of 1920-1922, deflation was not even taking place, and the 1920-1922 are minor compared to inflation occuring during the 1910s.
I'm amazed you think you figured out some CPI shit that professors of economics would just magically ignore. did you know btw there was a huge depression before the Fed was around? the Panic of 1819 huh how did that happen....

I would refute this better but it's late and you saying that you just FIGURED OUT ALL THEM STATS THAT PROFESSOR WHO GAVE A LAYMAN'S VERSION DIDN'T GO INTO DETAIL ERGO HE'S WRONG is pretty funny. that and considering how much you've lied above and said OH IT DOESN'T SAY THAT leads me to believe your facts are almost certainly grossly inaccurate!

Like it or not, those facts are straight from the Bureau of Labor statistics.  It would be entertaining to have you explained how I exaggerated numerical data.

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3.) The Federal Reserve obviously had plenty of power to expand the money supply despite the gold standard, seeing as how in managed to double the consumer price index in less then a decade.
no. these have nothing to do with each other. what are you, stupid?

okay let's ignore your huge fucking selective bias by skipping over the salient part of the link provided and jumping to AHA SEE THE GOLD STANDARD HELPED THE GREAT DEPRESSION because I don't care and there isn't a single piece of economic literature that agrees with you. let's play the hypothetical scenario game.

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The US converting to a gold standard would require them to re-issue all currency in circulation as a fixed amount of gold. Since the US government doesn't have a lot of gold, it would mean a lot less currency. Thus, they would need to purchase gold — as a result, the price of gold would skyrocket. The US government would have to sell assets in order to purchase the now absurdly expensive gold, or run a deficit. Taxes would be forced to rise to finance this.

However, this would be pointless, since approximately 1 trillion dollars of goods flows out of the US economy every year. Thus, the economy would literally bled gold bullion. The only way to balance out is a recession, so deep and crippling, that it would eliminate the US trade deficit.

Okay, the regulatory mechanism for the gold standard works like this. Suppose we have two countries, A and B.

Now, for whatever reason, country A is on the gold standard. It doesn't matter what country B is on. Now, A and B buy and sell goods to one another. In order to buy and sell goods, the people in these countries need to purchase currency from one another to buy them.

When an economy buys things from another economy, they need to purchase money from the other economy to buy goods. So, for instance, country A needs to buy country B's currency (call it B$) to buy goods from country B. And vice versa.

Now, as they buy and sell, there usually will be an imbalance been how much people buy and sell in a given country. For instance, country A may be buying more from country B than it is selling. This leads to an imbalance in the currencies, because people in country A will be buying up B$ and selling A$. When it all comes out in the wash, there is a surplus of A$ on the market -- that is, the demand for A$ is lower than the amount supplied.

Now, people will work to correct this surplus, because it's pointless for them to have A$ sitting around no one wants to own. In a quasi-fiat system of freely traded currencies, the exchange rate does this. Bankers and financial dealers adjust the relative values of the currencies to make the "price" of A$ optimal. Currencies wax and wane in value based on their economies and variety of other complex mumbo jumbo which doesn't really matter here.

However, in the gold standard this doesn't happen, because A$ are linked to a fixed amount of gold -- that is, a commodity. Instead, people who hold A$ start redeeming them for gold, in order to sell them as a useful commodity. As a result, Country A's stockpile of gold, which they use to back their currency on, dwindles. In turn, the supply of money for country A falls.

Not enough money is circulation causes the economy to constrict, since doing basic business becomes increasingly difficult. It also can cause deflation, and a host of other problems. In short, the only way for A's domestic economy to come into equillibrium is for it to crash. Businesses shut down, and domestic demand for goods slows as the economy stalls.

While this is a bad thing, it does do one very good thing. If you have no money, because the economy is in recession, you can't very well afford to buy items from country B. Thus, the supply of A$ on the market falls, and people stop redeeming the excess for gold. The process brings the two markets into equilibrium again, and all is well in the world of international commerce.

Of course, the side effects are not exactly pleasant for people in country A.

The initial premise of this argument is faulty.  Sure, if you back the dollar with the same amount gold it was backed with in 1913, it is unlikely you could ever find enough gold to back all the currency in circulation.  But this entire scenario can be avoided simply by backing the dollar with less gold, in this case approximately 4 hundreths of the quantity used to back the 1913 dollar.  Then, their would be sufficient gold in our possesion to back all currency, without the need to import so much as a ounce of gold, and the imaginary disaster that befalls country A is averted(hooray!).

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The big problem is that once you move in to the scale of global markets on a gold standard you can no longer directly control the flow of money in and out of the country. This is well and dandy if you are running a trade surplus; money/gold flows in while goods flow out and you see a healthy level of inflation (gasp! Poor person tax ) and economic growth. Reverse that situation for a country running a trade deficit and a large amount of currency flows out of the country overseas. Lacking all this commodity based currency causes the value of money/gold to surge to the heavens and you see massive deflation. There isn't enough money in circulation so economic growth and investment stagnates and causes people to hoard what little they have left and it spurs a depression cycle.

Actually, the deflation will act as an automatic control that will vastly discourage this type of behavior.  Because deflation is beneificial to individuals who save and invest, and harmful to individuals who borrow, individuals will provided with increased incentives to invest and save money they might otherwise spend on consumption.  Less consumption means fewer imports as fewer items are being consumed, and savings and investment encourage the development of new capita and business which will seek markets to sell their goods.  But because of decreased domestic consumption, these businesses on the receiving end of investiment will be forced to seek oversea markets, increasing exports.  Once the imports and exports stabilize, deflation will slow/cease, and a normal level of consumption will resume.

Not to mention that there simply isn't enough gold out there to buy up to recognize and back the value of our economy so you would need to mandate a massive devaluation of currency right off the bat just to make the initial adjustment.

Again, you just need to set your intial ratio of dollars to gold to ensure their is sufficient gold to back the current amount of currency in circulation.

Fiat systems work because the value of your currency is an aggregate of the total worth of your economy and is being constantly re-evaluated and re-appraised by other economies, countries, and foreign businesses.

And yet it is the Federal Reserve, not these other economies, countries, or foreign businesses, that ultimately regulates the amount of currency in circulation.  So if you need to incorporate these entities into the value of your currency, and they are not currently being incorporated into the value of your currency, how is this system considered "working".

Only so much "Jew manipulation" can happen because if you push it too hard everyone else realizes you are trying to "print money" that doesn't have real economic backing and they devalue your currency for you because of that. Trying to tie your currency to a rock or oil or some other singular (or small set) of commodities is retarded because it will never be a truly accurate measure of your economy's worth, it might only keep in line for some periods of time if you are lucky.

Gold is not intended to provide an absolutely perfect measure of the economy's worth, only a reasonably stable referenced through which the demand of goods can be compared.

TL;DR Gold Standard only works if you put the entire continental united states in a gigantic bubble and blast it off in to space so you never have to deal with any foreign bodies again

What about all that foreign trade we did before 1913, when we were neither in a gigantic bubble or in space?  It worked then, despite all your theories and hypothetical scenarios.  You talk as if the gold standard has never been used with any success.

okay lets see if you can figure these out?

what gets me is the complete dishonesty you've been peddling. you clearly ignore salient points and jump on those you have weak rejoinders to. I'll at least admit I don't give a fuck about the Great Depression and the reason I linked had nothing to do with it (and even then you ignored the evidence like how every country not on the gold standard was okay and you know, the basic economic theory that makes your argument impossible), but you're just skipping over the bad parts, aren't you tex? whoa he didn't SAY mind control how can you exaggerate it...he just said the UN was secretly indoctrinating students.

Yes, the horror, I used evidence when talking about the Great Depression and I don't use mind control and indoctrination interchangeably.  Surely, deception knows no greater depths.  Such are the perils of the internet.

hahahaha this is brilliant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmYMzxA_U-c

That shit is gonna give me nightmares.

What about all that foreign trade we did before 1913, when we were neither in a gigantic bubble or in space?  It worked then, despite all your theories and hypothetical scenarios.  You talk as if the gold standard has never been used with any success.

I was going to respond to some of your other comments, but I think this particular quote gave me an aneurysm.

EDIT from the ER: Though, really, this is pretty much THE definitive Ron Paul supporter quote, isn't it? 

So can someone give an update on the obama-hilary situation?
nbc and cnn are telling me dozens of things and i don't know what to think.

Let's review what I said earlier.


You know, the thing about these Ron Paul supporters is that they can't accept even the vaguest possibility of them being wrong. They will not be proven wrong. It's just not going to happen. That's why they approach every single point of criticism with "no you're wrong, because" instead of "this is a valid concern, but we can explain this with thus and so". No. Whenever they see criticism, they immediately go on the defense. There's not even any argumentation. Just look at the posts of BlizzardVeers and Phanixis. One didn't even explain why he supports Ron Paul and the libertarian viewpoint, the other basically just quoted Omega's post and said "nah" to every single point he made. He didn't even try to back up the "facts" he mentioned. Such as his "fact" that "the U.N. has a habit of pulling us into wars". He says it like it's a fact, while it is in fact ridiculous, and does not mention even a single shred of evidence to back up such a ludicrous claim. Neither wrote a post in which they actually explain why they're right, like Omega and I both did.

[...]

Supporting an alternative candidate like Ron Paul is probably very exciting, because a lot of people in our demographic (people in their teens and early twenties) like to be alternative. But in the end, you can't substitute a good understanding of politics and the world with a standard list of demagogic statements.


Phanixis, you are a demagogue. You claim to know a lot about politics but say frighteningly little of substance.

I suppose I can understand some of your concerns.  But in regard to providing evidence to back my claims, sometimes I provide simple reasons and statements for my positions, in sometimes I go into greater detail providing specific evidence.  The reason why I often stick to basic statements is to keep these types of rebuttals concise, these topics can get very long very fast.  If particular issue is then taken with a given statement, it can always be further elaborated with evidence in a later post.  I am merely trying to strike a balance between being concise I providing sufficient evidence.

Furthermore, I haven't seen opponents using significantly greater evidence than myself in these Ron Paul topics.  They seem to start with a bunch hyperlinks, some of which could be taken as evidence, but then proceed essentially along the same lines as my own arguments.  If you do not believe me, consider a statement you just made:

You can't even explain why you really want to pull out of the U.N., that organization that has been proven to greatly reduce the amount of violent conflicts in the world, to which every single country in the world is a member.

You just made this statement, as if it were as clear as the light of day.  No evidence was provided to the effect that
1.) violent conflicts in the world have gone down
2.) the U.N. was the cause in the reduction of violence

You might actually have evidence of this or seen statistics that demonstrate this is true, but you never posted them here.  You just made the statement.  This goes for the rest of the reasons for your support for the U.N.

The U.N.'s purpose is to help people everywhere in the world by providing food and development to those who are in desperate need of it. Their peacekeeping soldiers are there to help prevent bloody conflicts from occurring.

Sure their good reasons for supporting the U.N., but you never provided the evidence this is true.  I had argued that it would be beneficial to leave the UN because the have dragged the US into wars, it was a good reason but with no evidence, perhaps I decided the fact was obvious as well.

Mind you, you were probably constrained for time and had no interest in provided detailed evidence for every claim you made in regard to the UN.  On an internet forum, such as this, this is perfectly understandable.  But please don't go criticizing me for not providing detailed evidence for every claim I made when you are not living up to the same standards you wish to impose on me.

As far as the demagogue claim goes, there may be faults in my arguments, but I don't ever remeber claiming that I was an expert of any kind in anything in this topic or even on these forums.  As long as I can remember, I have just been providing arguments.  If you think you have seen me claim I was an expert on a particular topic or claim that I  had complete understanding or mastery of a particular topic, feel free to quote me making those claims from whatever topics you can find.

I regard to some of your other complaints:

For example, you never mention exactly why it's a good thing to be against the rights of black people to vote as harbored in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You simply state that "he provided some criticism". You don't mention what kind of criticism and why it's a good thing he did it. Because you don't know that. (By the way, he didn't just "provide some criticism", he actually voted "no". He also sponsored a bill that would weaken it.)

Ok, I didn't just claim he provided some criticism.  If you read my original posted, I actually pointed out that it was house resolution 676 that Ron Paul voted, which was a celebration of the Civil Rights Act, and not the actual Civil Rights Acts of 1964(after all, he was not in Congress in 1964).  In regard to the other bill, it pointed out it was forced busing, but I probably should have elaborated on how I came to that conclusion.  Still, Omega never criticized me for making that leap in logic, he just said it was necessary for desegregation.  In regard to this particular bill, here is the text:

Public School Civil Rights Act of 1984 - Eliminates inferior Federal court jurisdiction to issue any order requiring the assignment or transportation of students to public schools on the basis of race, color, or national origin.

Permits individuals and school boards to seek relief from court orders made prior to this Act unless the court makes certain findings, including: (1) that the acts giving rise to the order intentionally and specifically caused the segregation; (2) that no other remedy would work; and (3) that the benefits of the order outweigh its economic, social, and educational costs.

Basically, it is saying that a federal court is no longer allowed to assign transportation to students based on race.  If a student was assigned transportation based on race in the past based on his race, that student would no longer be bound by that particular order.  So without this bill, a federal court could assign a student transportation based on his race, and that student was stuck with this arrangement.  This actual sounds racist to me.  In any case, this practice has a more common name, "forced busing".  

I of course just threw out the term "forced busing", assumed everyone had read the link and new what I was talking about, and moved on.  No one posted saying that they read the link and found that it clearly wasn't forced busing, so I felt no need to elaborate further on the particular claim.

Also, as a matter of course, I have been reading many of the links provided and providing responses based on the content of the link, even going as far as to point out when the links weren't pointed to the correct material.  You can actually see this in my past responses if you read them carefully.

You mumble something about "U.N. mind control", completely ignorant of the fact that the U.S. is one of the permanent members that has every right to not comply when the U.N. wishes it to do something.

What I said about UN mind control was very specific.  Someone had intially placed a link supposedly proving the Ron Paul claimed the UN was mind controlling college students.  I read the link, saw no such statements, and pointed that fact out.

The total amount of gold that has ever been mined is estimated at around 142,000 tonnes. The price of gold has wildly fluctuated, being $27,300 per kilogram in 1980, around $8,000 per kilogram in 1999, and again around $27,500 in 2008. According to Kitco, gold is currently $975 per troy ounce, which is about $31,000 per kilogram. Now, that would mean that the current combined value of the entire planetary stock of gold is around $4.402 trillion. That's much less than the amount of cash circulating in the U.S. alone, which is estimated at $7.4 trillion. Since not all gold can be brought to U.S. bank vaults, either, the price of gold would be obscenely higher than it should be if the U.S. were to implement a gold standard. This in itself is not even the largest complaint against the gold standard (there's also the cost of even maintaining one, estimated at about 2.5% of the U.S.'s GDP, for example), but as you can see, things aren't that simple.

Now that is a good point, I will have to look into that somewhat further.  You could still deal with it by running gold as legal tender alongside U.S. fiat currency, although that wasn't quite what we were originally discussing.  Although I have no idea were you got the 2.5% GDP figure, that seems far to high a figure for the maintainance of any monetary system.

By the way, there are also nobel prize winning economists who strongly oppose the gold standard. I'll leave it as a readers' exercise to figure out who they are. (Annoying when people do that, isn't it?)

I never said there were no important economist who opposed the gold standard, I just pointed that there were also prominent economist who supported returning to it.

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What about all that foreign trade we did before 1913, when we were neither in a gigantic bubble or in space?
1913 was 95 years ago. If you believe that what happened then is still largely relevant with the globalization we're facing today, you must be dreaming. Ignoring the idea of global collaboration and integration at a time like this would be economical suicide. I'm not even exclusively talking about the gold standard here.

Sure, but why are you so certain that it would no longer work when you haven't seen in action during the 21st.  I mention 1913 because that was the most recent date in which the gold standard was truly in place(without the federal reserve), although some semblance of it was retained up until Nixon, whereas there is nothing to indicate that we would be unable to use the gold standard in our modern economy provided we were able to reinstate it successfully.

This is actually my largest complaint about Ron Paul. He ignores the fact that there's a world out there that's not part of the U.S. but still plays an important role in your daily lives. It's for this reason he also wants all U.S. troops on foreign soil to return home. He doesn't realize or doesn't care that this will send a shock wave of conflict through the regions that depend on U.S. troops that cannot be reinforced by U.N. troops on a short-term basis. (Then again, you think that the U.N. just controls minds into taking part in wars, so I cannot possibly expect you to provide a reasonable answer to that.)

Ron Paul can be a bit too isolationist at times, but this is something I believe we actually need to do.  We are deep in debt and running a huge deficit, and we really do not have the luxury of indefinitely stationing troops across the entire globe.  I do not believe that the world is as quite as dependent on our troops(or on us in general) as we like to think.  We can at the very least, remove our troops stationed in stable regions of the world such as Europe.

Dada you have a big penis.

EDIT- you too phanaxis.