faustus@ucbcad.UUCP (01/29/85)
[ Note the change of groups. ] > Find someone with a Federal Reserve Note (i.e. One Dollar Bill, Fiver, > etc.). Examine it closely. Notice the words "This note is legal tender for > all debts, public and private", examine the bill closely for the promise that > the bill can be redeemed for some portion of the reserve on which it is based. > Unless your bill is a collector's item you will not find such a promise. It > is still a "Federal Reserve Note", but there is no reserve of gold or silver > with which to back it up. Isn't it curious that all our significant battles > with inflation have taken place in the short time since we got off the gold > standard? I can think of a few reasons why the gold standard is useless. If the economy expands at say 5 % / year, and the gold reserves in Fort Knox don't expand by the same rate, then you get deflation. (Assuming that every dollar is worth a certain amount of gold.) I don't know much about economics, I will admit, but deflation certainly isn't something that seems desirable. > No. Inflation is caused by the Federal Reserve system. Unemployment is caused > by minimum wage laws. Please tell me why we need welfare and minimum wage laws > So we can prevent people who have been failed by public education from getting > their feet in the door to a way out of poverty? Let's not be so dogmatic. Unemployment certainly isn't "caused" by any one thing. I'm sure that unemployment would go down a lot if there were no more minimum wage, but probably the total amount of money that employers pay their workers would go down too. > > The government did nothing to make sure that there > > were only 4 major auto companies in the US. > > Bullshit! The U.S. government has said quite explicitly by its actions that > it will make sure that these 4 companies receive special privileges including > but not limited to special loans not available to startup companies and pro- > tection from foreign competitors. One of the easiest ways to make cars > cheaper is to build them in Japan where common sense still prevails. Japan certainly isn't a good example of a free market economy. The reason that the Japanese companies do so well is because they get much more of the sort of government aid you want to avoid. (Because we pay all their defense bills, incidentally.) Wayne