Ron Paul, The Fed, The End of an Empire

I was reading a story in the New York Times Magazine today and saw this in the comment section below. It succinctly sums up why we need a complete overhaul to our monetary system, before its too late.

We should all hope that Ron Paul is not only nominated, but elected President, for if not then this country is in for an extremely hard road ahead due to the pressing issue of the failing fiat monetary system. If Ron Paul is not elected then the next President, either Republican or more probably Democratic, will only continue allowing the Federal Reserve creating money out of debt until the entire system fails under the mounting pressure of an irreversible debt which will rapidly require far more service than the economy can continue to produce.

Dr. Paul is the only candidate that even brings up the issue of our failing monetary system.

Consider this: a person making $32,000 per year today has the equivalent purchasing power of $5,907.40 1970 dollars. So, the same person making $15.38 per hour today is equal to making $2.84 per hour in real purchasing power in 1970 dollars. It is not the price of goods and services that have risen so much, but the purchasing power of our dollar that has been so drastically reduced. Our standard of living has been effectively reduced through fiat money inflation.

Is there any wonder that poverty is becoming rampant? The government has no other choice but enforce minimum wages in order to keep the working poor at some level of subsistence. At the current $5.85 per hour a person has the same 1970 purchasing power of $1.08 per hour, at 40 hours per week that person is effectively making $43.20 per week to make ends meet.

What are we waiting on, to become serfs of the State?

The fiat system has a finite lifespan and will terminate due to the fact that every single fiat note is nothing more than a legal notification of a debt obligation carrying on top of that debt an interest obligation. It is simply mathematically impossible for such a system to maintain viability for an extended period of time before it collapses under the weight of the debt that both maintains it and must be serviced by it.

We will begin to notice that all the patches and band-aids the Federal Reserve slaps on the economy no longer do the trick as we approach the fiat systems lifespan termination point. Everything we now place our collective faith in regarding the economy and our financial futures are hinged upon a system that is failing like all fiat systems before it have. Every single Federal Reserve Note is borrowed into existence and the expansion of monetary circulation is in direct proportion to the underlying debt on which it was created however, on top of all that debt is the attachment of an interest obligation which only adds to the pressure and shortens the lifespan of the entire system. All your investments, your pensions, your 401ks, your savings, your insurance, government bonds, all government programs and all commerce is completely built upon a fiat monetary system that will terminate in the near future and there is absolutely nothing that the government or the Federal Reserve can do within that system to stop that collapse. It will take a complete scrapping of the entire system and only Dr. Ron Paul has an inkling of what it is going to take to accomplish such a transition.

By 2012 we will all wish that it was Ron Paul in the White House instead of the establishment darling candidate that is most likely going to “win” this election.

From  Republicae on January 21, 2008 3:09 PM in the story here.

Diebold

I never imagined myself to be one of the “crazies” that believed that folks were cheating in elections.

But, the more I learned about Ohio in 2004, I started thinking maybe it was possible.

And now, I think its pretty clear that the Clintons, or the powers that be, had something to do with New Hampshire.

And it appears that Ron Paul voters were undercounted as well.

This is why I’m not too big fan of cops, or the drug war.

Unbelievable. This sorta stuff happens way too often.

I should know. I’ve had two instances in the past year where cops have beat on my door, one time with guns drawn and the other time they intimidated me into letting them search my apartment… even though it was quite clear after I gave them my drivers license, that I wasn’t the person they were looking for.

And I swear, if I hadn’t been awake at 11:30 PM when they had their guns drawn and were beating on my screen door while I was sitting inside, visible to them, I would have gotten the hell out of my house through the back entrance. When you live in East Nashville and someone’s beating on your door in the middle of the night, unless you’ve got a gun, you should probably try to escape. Had I done that, I might have been shot and killed.

Ludwig von Mises quotes

Maybe it won’t be a Thursday thing; just a thing I do on occasion. Without further ado:

The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them…. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.

-Ludwig von Mises

Ron Paul

Today is Guy Fawkes day… a day that Ron Paul supporters have decided to money bomb the campaign. The goal was to get 100,000 people to donate 100 dollars a piece today. That won’t happen. But, as of 8 AM, a third of the way through the day, 850,000 dollars has been donated. I guess its just spambots right?

You can check this link to see currently how much money has been donated today.

Thursdays are for Ludwig Von Mises

All those not familiar with economics (i.e., the immense majority) do not see any reason why they should not coerce other people by means of force to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord.

Ludwig Von Mises

Republican Debate

I guess its telling that the Republican Elite of Florida is so pissed off about Ron Paul’s message that they act like two year olds whenever he says something they disagree with.

Really? A room full of of adults booing someone in a presidential debate. Classy.

Ron Paul, Poll Numbers, and McCain is Out of Cash

So, McCain is in the red. By about 100,000 dollars.

Sure, he does have 1.8 million for his general election fund, but he’s still running in third place. And he’s got no money for upward mobility.

And onto Ron Paul and poll numbers.

I found this link over at lewrockwell.com and they make a pretty good case as to why Ron Paul is dominating the internet, but his poll numbers are still lacking (but rising… up to 5% in the latest gallup poll)

Most of the polls taken are of likely republican primary voters. Which mostly means, people who voted in the primaries for 2004.

Wanna know what voter turnout was like for the 2004 Republican Primaries. 6.6%

And there’s a reason for that obviously. GWB was running unopposed. There really wasn’t any reason to vote. The nomination was a lock.

But that means, in many of these polls, the couple percentage points that Ron Paul is getting are from people who went out of their way to vote for Bush in the primaries in 2004. Those, I would imagine, are part of the 35 percenters that still support this administration.

And when Ron Paul wins this election, Phil Wilson is gonna owe me dinner at J. Alexanders.

We Love Big Brother and He Looks Out for Us

Now that the government feels like they are effectively cracking down on cigarettes, schools are now sending letters home to parents telling them that their children are fat.

No. I’m not kidding.

Welcome to America, where you children really belong to the State. We just let you keep them if you raise them to the correct standards.

I know most people reading probably don’t have a problem with the government taking away a child from a parent who is deemed “unfit”.  Even I have trouble mustering up too much sympathy for a parent who is on drugs and is not fulfilling their parental duties to their children. But there’s a problem with this logic that I had not thought of until recently.

What if the State decides that you are unfit to have your kids if you teach them about Jesus?

Or if you don’t give them everything they ask for?

Or if you paddle them?

We’ve got a runaway government here people. Ron Paul has been trying to tell us for almost thirty years, and we haven’t been listening.

Its time to listen.

As government grows, the amount of liberty you have shrinks. There’s an indirect correlation between the size of government and the amount of liberty a citizen has.

It all goes back to the wise saying, “He who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither”. Thanks Ben Franklin. You knew what was going on.

A Point about Ron Paul

I’ve been wondering, as has Glen Dean over at MCB, how many of Ron Paul’s supporters understand that his other positions run completely counter to the leftist ideologues that are now in his camp.

I think most of them do.

Sure, there are still the lamebrain people who keep envisioning a Paul/Kucinich ticket… which is an obvious sign of mental deficiency, given that Kucinich is a huge statist with socialist dreams for the United States, and Paul, well, is for the abolition of the vast majority of Federal power.

But most of what I see in the Paul camp are a group of people discovering for the first time, that Libertarianism is not just “Republicans that like weed” (though I imagine there are a good number of people who call themselves libertarian who fit that description) but its a philosophy that asks the question “Would we rather live free lives that understandably involve risk, or would we rather trade our freedoms for temporary security that really can’t be guaranteed?”

I come at this from a Christian perspective, I believe. If we are forced to do “good” then what we are doing is in no way good. Am I a good person because someone comes up to me at gunpoint and makes me give 40% of my income to them to  redistribute? Am I a good person because I vote for laws to keep people from engaging in activities that are dangerous only for the people directly involved? I don’t think so. I think the only measure of determining good is being free to make choices, and doing the right thing.

Would anyone in this audience go to their neighbor, berate him for not helping the poor enough, then force him at gunpoint to give away 20-50% of his/her check every week to feed them? I doubt it.

But that’s what the government does. It legalizes stealing. A large mass that pays zero income taxes votes people into office who raise taxes exponentially on a minority of people that is so small, that they will never have a voice in what they pay. Think of it as being in a group of ten people, you being one of these, and the other nine have far less resources than you, so they determine you are going to pay for everything, and if you don’t like it, they will kill you.

That is our tax system. Its unjust. While it may be just for taxes to be progressive, it surely is not just for more than half a country to pay next to nothing, while a small percentage of the populous funds the entire system. One could argue that they do it all ready by creating companies where the masses are employed.

Also, they are coming to find out that a small government is not nearly as likely to create an empire around the world. Libertarianism is against force in any way. You don’t force people to redistribute what they’ve earned, and you don’t force people to have the same political structure as you. Libertarianism comes down to this; force is immoral. If someone is not free to make a decision, they can never become a better person.

Thoughts?