Ominous prediction indeed.

[4est_4est_Gump]

I drew a cartoon of the cartoon you posted and then cashed it at the bank.

You play dough bank doesn't count.

It's more hope than change.

 

[Ishmael]

Who was that dirty low down lizzard belly son of a bitch that took America off of the gold standard???





Oh yeah.


Nixon!

I think he was a republican.

The gold standard was doomed the day all gold in the hands of the citizens was confiscated and it was made illegal for the citizen to hold or trade in gold.

Who was the scoundrel that did that?

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The gold standard was doomed the day all gold in the hands of the citizens was confiscated and it was made illegal for the citizen to hold or trade in gold.

Who was the scoundrel that did that?

Ishmael

Marcus Aurelius?

 

[Sean Renaud]

The gold standard was doomed the day all gold in the hands of the citizens was confiscated and it was made illegal for the citizen to hold or trade in gold.

Who was the scoundrel that did that?

Ishmael

The Gold Standard wasn't this great thing anyway.

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Deflation fears in Europe

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/11/10/Europe-Crushed-by-Importing-Chinese-Deflation

 

[Saint Peter]

The gold standard was doomed the day all gold in the hands of the citizens was confiscated and it was made illegal for the citizen to hold or trade in gold.

Who was the scoundrel that did that? Ishmael

Ishmael did that?

Dirty low down lizzard bellied son of a bitch!

 

[Sean Renaud]

The founders thought so much of the gold standard they placed a death penalty on anyone who violated it. The Coinage Act of 1792 in Section 19 of the Act established a penalty of death for debasing the gold or silver coins.

Which had nothing to with thinking the gold standard was great.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"The gold standard as a constitutional restraint on our government was abolished in the United States, not in 1934 nor in 1971, but in 1819 with the US Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland.[12] With this famous Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution, the federal government acquired the sovereign power to manipulate the nation's money, from which the legal tender laws of the Civil War, the central-banking powers of the Federal Reserve System, and the ultimate prohibition on any private use of gold as money in 1934 derived. This link between sovereignty and currency manipulation has been ably argued by Henry Mark Holzer.[13]"
Ron Paul
http://mises.org/daily/2826

Who was that dirty low down lizzard belly son of a bitch...?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"Cynics dispose of the advocacy of the restitution of the gold standard by calling it Utopian. Yet we have only the choice between two Utopias: the Utopia of a market economy, not paralysed by government sabotage, on the one hand, and the Utopia of totalitarian all-round planning on the other hand. The choice of the first alternative implies the decision in favour of the gold standard."
Ludwig Elder von Mises

 

[Ishmael]

"The gold standard as a constitutional restraint on our government was abolished in the United States, not in 1934 nor in 1971, but in 1819 with the US Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland.[12] With this famous Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution, the federal government acquired the sovereign power to manipulate the nation's money, from which the legal tender laws of the Civil War, the central-banking powers of the Federal Reserve System, and the ultimate prohibition on any private use of gold as money in 1934 derived. This link between sovereignty and currency manipulation has been ably argued by Henry Mark Holzer.[13]"
Ron Paul
http://mises.org/daily/2826

Who was that dirty low down lizzard belly son of a bitch...?

It was that SCOTUS decision that set Jackson on the path to abolish the Federal Bank.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The demon Democrat seed...

 

[Que]

The natural consequence of the Universe?



Which the hell school of Economics has a textbook that says that?

Anyone that grew up post Carter with the "new normal" of noticeable levels of inflation think that it has to be.

The thinking that there are acceptable (or worse "desirable") levels of inflation are basically saying that a leaky toilet shouldn't be fixed because it helps municipalities have a constant outflow of water.

Never mind the perils of a deflationary spiral...which if that occurs is also due to government meddling. Universe seems to forget to mandate inflation during such times.

edit: jinx!

Deflation fears in Europe

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/11/10/Europe-Crushed-by-Importing-Chinese-Deflation

Somebody better phone out to the Universe.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Interesting thought.

I'll have to think about that.

edit:

tee hee

 

[Sean Renaud]

Anyone that grew up post Carter with the "new normal" of noticeable levels of inflation think that it has to be.

The thinking that there are acceptable (or worse "desirable") levels of inflation are basically saying that a leaky toilet shouldn't be fixed because it helps municipalities have a constant outflow of water.

Never mind the perils of a deflationary spiral...which if that occurs is also due to government meddling. Universe seems to forget to mandate inflation during such times.

edit: jinx!



Somebody better phone out to the Universe.

I'm still unclear on how you don't understand that inflation is not just acceptable and desirable to a certain extent but is a natural an unnavoidable consequence of the universe. What do you think inflation is exactly, in your own words not some link.

 

[kbate]

How about parsing that, then?

Are the majority skilled, educated, healthy, and fluent in English?

You have facts to back that the majority are any two of those things?

I would guess that 51% of illegal immigrants are, arguably, healthy. At least to the extent that the average overweight native-born American is. I doubt that 51% of the population of illegals has a communicable disease when they enter. How many of them are immunized? How many of them have exposure to and are possibly carriers of third-world diseases that we have nearly eradicated here?

What would you consider "skilled?"

You are not seriously arguing that anything close to half of all illegals are "educated" in any classical sense of the word, are you?

I am not that concerned about English fluency; in my area most people are bilingual enough for those with no English to get by. I see illegals with very little Spanish, either. Not that we don't have plenty of places in the US where swaths of population have no proficiency in any language. That doesn't mean we need to import more illiteracy.

Nobody knows the exact numbers, but you haven't seen me make any claims to know it. You haven't seen me make any claims at all about their qualification to be employed, be citizens, be deported, be anything but statistics in a discussion. When I make a claim the way Ishmael did, you may ask me to prove it. You may not ask me to disprove or prove a negative.

Are they skilled? Obviously skilled enough to take low wage work and 'put millions of Americans out of work'. Or to take other work and put Blue Collar Americans out of work. They aren't getting jobs because they cannot do them. Even greedy American Corporations don't hire incompetents just to save wages.

Are they educated? Some, some not so. Just as with most of the Americans whose jobs they are stealing - they have the equivalent of a high-school education or less. Some have college education and come here for an opportunity to use it.

Are they healthy? Have they been exposed to disease? Have you? Are you? That is an unknown. Are they vaccinated? Some, some not. You may have noticed that Polio and Smallpox have not wiped out our southwest and haven't even wiped out the illegal immigrants. Health is a red-herring in this thread and was only brought up to further demonize.

Are they fluent in English? Some, some not so. Is that the determining factor? It obviously matters to Ishmael and AJ. Some of them even are capable of learning English. Amazing isn't it.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I'm still unclear on how you don't understand that inflation is not just acceptable and desirable to a certain extent but is a natural an unnavoidable consequence of the universe. What do you think inflation is exactly, in your own words not some link.

What fucking book of Economics does the term Universe come out of?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

...

Are they fluent in English? Some, some not so. Is that the determining factor? It obviously matters to Ishmael and AJ. Some of them even are capable of learning English. Amazing isn't it.

 

[Que]

I'm still unclear on how you don't understand that inflation is not just acceptable and desirable to a certain extent but is a natural an unnavoidable consequence of the universe. What do you think inflation is exactly, in your own words not some link.

When have you know me to be at a loss for my own words??

Inflation is like traffic jams on the 405. It happens because everyone is looking for a little edge to get a car-length or two closer to their destination. If everyone truly believed that no matter what you did, you would more or less arrive at the same time, people would chill, stay in their lane and traffic would slow much smoother.

When government gets involved it opens up temporary HOV lanes, sends emergency vehicles screeching through and in general disrupts the orderly flow. The traffic reports cause people to dive for exits and flood surface strrets and other gas wasting dodges.

You are a Keynesian, yes? The pump-priming analogy was apt, but not as helpful as he had hoped and not at all what modern distortionist of his ideas advocate.

Leaving that aside. Government can (and reasonably, you would argue should) have a stimulative effect. With rules like "prevailing wage" they pay a bit more than they might have to for labor and in the same way often through graft and corruption, pay too much for goods as well. With the purchasing power of government no one should pay less for ball-point pens then them. I haven't seen the number but can we agree it is probably higher than Staples?

Those are minor examples but it occurs government wide. There is a definite amount of capital available to invest, sit idle, waste, whatever. It grows as someone strike oil, finds gold, or invents something that those with oil and gold and wheat and so forth wants.

When the government plays around with interest rates what it does is demand shift. Without fannie and freddie buying up mortgages, your local bank could never loan more than the sum total of all the money in the bank. Which means your local (state and national) savings has to be as much as the net asset value of all the stuff you lend money for. So if your average depositor has only $2000 in the bank, you can't possibly write an average mortgage cost of $200,000.

Back in old man Potter's day (Its a wonderful life reference) the rich old misor owned a bunch of squalid little places he rented out that he built or bought with his capital, and people scrimped and bought homes that were expensive, by those days standards, but not by todays. Nowdays it is not uncommon to own a home that costs 5-10 times your annual income.

As the costs of everything goes up, those that make these things benefit, but those that need them struggle to keep up. Wages never accelerate as fast as the more reactive costs of materials and goods sold.

In addition all that below market (actually made from thin air) loaned money causes demand to be artificially strong and the cost of whatever you are encouraging that way goes up. See the price of cars, see the cost of a college education. When people do not have to save to get something, or at least pay the actual market rate of capital for the thing they desire, they do not care as much what these things cost.

In the Carter years inflation was weekly. and noticeable. Ski season you could rent skis for like $20 one week and a couple of weeks later it was $25, then $30. My friends and I took our lawn mowing or paper-route money and bought skis for about $200, reasoning that the skis had been $150 last season and they would now "pay for themselves" with about 6 ski-trips or less.

Probably a smart decision if that was the only variable, but what would have happened if I still had that $200 compounded at 7% over the last 35 years? 7% is a conservative number for stock market growth for any reasonable long term period in the last 100 years.

Keep in mind even that figure is subject to inflationary pressures, gains corporations make from government contracts. monopolistic practices as government gets in the way of upstarts on their behalf and so on.

We cannot and do not want to return to village blacksmith days, but at one time everyone knew what to pay for things, and it was constant over time. When a price was raised it was because the product was improved in a way that caused the consumer to want it more. Supply and demand would cause temporary, regional pockets of inflation, but goods would flow in to where there was demand and prices would normalize.

You traded a $5 gold coin for a suit of clothes. These days that 1/10th of an ounce still gives you $150 to shop mens wearhouse.

The effort to get gold is the same as always. The inflation that you see is an inflation in the stated value of a medium of exchange. Nothing to do with the inflation of the actual difficulty in making or finding or digging or pumping something.

What you have with a free-floating currency is a tax on savings. A mattress tax. You cannot afford to put green-backs in a coffee-can for a rainy day. It forces you to "invest" it somewhere (not a horrible idea) but it also forces you to take risk. See real estate and dot-com bubbles. Those things do not slam the very rich who have enough capital to diversify.

Inflation hurts the poor first, especially the elderly on fixed income. They worked, they "saved" by putting 15% of the money that their employers spent on wages into SS. (more than enough for a comfortable retirement) and now they have to beg for the government to inflate the benefit continually just to eke out a meager existence.

SS was put in a mattress. It was not invested. The mattress tax is a lot of what what killed it.

But no inflation has not always been here. It is a direct result of not essentially bartering your goods and services for the labor of a miner. The miner's toil was the benchmark and that is how we know what things "should" cost.

The 49 gold rush was because the perception was that mining was easier than other means of building your wealth. For a short while maybe it was. There was gold in streams for the taking that was the product of eons of natural sluicing. Once that was vacuumed up, the value of gold was priced more appropriately.

 

[Sean Renaud]

What fucking book of Economics does the term Universe come out of?

None. In this case it doesn't need to. Inflation isn't exclusive to economics.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Well played query...



Well played.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

None. In this case it doesn't need to. Inflation isn't exclusive to economics.

Inflation is a word.

In economics it has a definition. Its definition has nothing to do with the Big Bang theory. Because the universe may be expanding does not mean that money 'has' to expand. Can you tell me why the money supply has to expand in economic terms, not astronomical jargon?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Inflation is a word.

In economics it has a definition. Its definition has nothing to do with the Big Bang theory. Because the universe may be expanding does not mean that money 'has' to expand. Can you tell me why the money supply has to expand in economic terms, not astronomical jargon?

Because money is a word. It may have a definition in economics but it has laws to which is must adhere that have little to do with mans will.

 

[Que]

Nobody knows the exact numbers, but you haven't seen me make any claims to know it. You haven't seen me make any claims at all about their qualification to be employed, be citizens, be deported, be anything but statistics in a discussion. When I make a claim the way Ishmael did, you may ask me to prove it. You may not ask me to disprove or prove a negative.

Are they skilled? Obviously skilled enough to take low wage work and 'put millions of Americans out of work'. Or to take other work and put Blue Collar Americans out of work. They aren't getting jobs because they cannot do them. Even greedy American Corporations don't hire incompetents just to save wages.

Are they educated? Some, some not so. Just as with most of the Americans whose jobs they are stealing - they have the equivalent of a high-school education or less. Some have college education and come here for an opportunity to use it.

Are they healthy? Have they been exposed to disease? Have you? Are you? That is an unknown. Are they vaccinated? Some, some not. You may have noticed that Polio and Smallpox have not wiped out our southwest and haven't even wiped out the illegal immigrants. Health is a red-herring in this thread and was only brought up to further demonize.

Are they fluent in English? Some, some not so. Is that the determining factor? It obviously matters to Ishmael and AJ. Some of them even are capable of learning English. Amazing isn't it.

So no one knows the exact numbers, but you require them in order to concede that the illegals are not on par with native born Americans in those areas? What is more likely? That they are more educated or less educated than Americans for whom we have spent something in the $20,000 per pupil per year?

I agree that the language they communicate in can in some places be immaterial. Given my paragrahp above you want to argue that it it more likely or less likely that even in Spanish their communication skills are on par with native Americans?

Given what we spend on healthcare, you think its more likely or less likely that they are immunized? If that is unimportant, why do our schools require it or require that you issue a signed statement refusing it?

If the money we have invested in the unemployed citizens we have, has not resulted in education, why do you suppose throwing more money at another group of people that are not our responsibility when they are in their home countries will suddenly result in a capable, educated workforce?

Either the money we spent the last 20 years on 20 year old Americans was a waste, or it wasn't. if it wasn't, you have to concur that on average they are a better bet to fill jobs, yes even low paying ones) than illegals.

We have no need to import unskilled labor. Skilled labor is employable in their home countries.

You cannot claim just because you haven't come down with a declarative statement that his generalizations are, in fact, inaccurate. You can argue, perhaps the degree to which you doubt them to be true, but to suggest them to be categorically untrue, absent numbers (that you say no one knows) is false.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Because money is a word. It may have a definition in economics but it has laws to which is must adhere that have little to do with mans will.

Enumerate those laws please.