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Congratulations, you've answered your own question. If the government can create however much money it wants to pay for things rather than having a controlled source from which to take its funds (the taxpayer), then the value of your dollar is going to go down (more money in the system = less value of each unit), and before long you'll be standing in line with a trillion dollar bill to get a tank of gas.
if i have 300 salt licks, and you have 5 tons of beef jerky, then we need to find some way to exchange salt licks and beef jerky with a medium of exchange where we both agree upon the value of the medium.
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Paper money is somewhat new in human history and is wholly a creation of governments. Unbacked paper money is even newer. Prior to laws decreeing "this shall be worth that" people tended to trade in precious metals. The current systems of paper money have been more a result of governments discovering that control of the medium of exchange is extremely lucrative than free markets finding it to be the most efficient medium of exchange.
sure, i agree.
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Originally Posted by Febtober
Congratulations, you've answered your own question.
in that case you didn't understand the question.
either that, or you don't seem to grasp the fact that we have been printing lots of dollars for decades, foreigners still want them, and a gallon of gas doesn't cost a trillion dollars.
If i have 300 salt licks, and you have 5 tons of beef jerky, then we need to find some way to exchange salt licks and beef jerky with a medium of exchange where we both agree upon the value of the medium.
And you don't think that communities would naturally gravitate towards a medium of exchange that could hold large amounts of worth in a small volume?
The US operated on bimetallic currency for many years and was very prosperous. People were able to evaluate the worth of the medium and price their goods accordingly in each when necessary.
why would the loaf cost $1m? that seems like an arbitrary number. you act like we'd be printing some freakishly large number, compared to our current situation. How much have we already printed in the past 2 decades?
i just keep hearing this refrain that "if we lower taxes it will stimulate growth." it's possible to do away with all federal taxes, so what's stopping these people?
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Originally Posted by le roi
zimbabwe has other problems. their agricultural and mining production has ground to a halt. government spending is 98% of zimbabwe's economy. that's a different issue.
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Originally Posted by le roi
in that case you didn't understand the question.
either that, or you don't seem to grasp the fact that we have been printing lots of dollars for decades, foreigners still want them, and a gallon of gas doesn't cost a trillion dollars.
you are the one not understanding things, and yes zimabawe is a good case study in printing too much money out of thin air to stimulate the economy, but since you dont like that comparision, how about the weimar republic? they also monetized their debt, and until zimbabwe did the same thing, they held the record for daily inflation, that being just over 500% per day, zimbabwes by the way is over 540% per day.
andif you havent noticed, we are going down the path of monetizing our debt, and what are we seeing? thats right higher gas prices, even though the price of a barrel of oil doesnt support the current gas prices. this in turn increases prices on food, and everything else we buy. and by the way, unless the federal government has changed their minds, a good part of the farm land in california has been eliminated due to a 2 inch fish.
so while our problems are not like zimbabwes yet, we are going down that road, and we need to be very careful to avoid hyperinflation.
you are the one not understanding things, and yes zimabawe is a good case study in printing too much money out of thin air to stimulate the economy, but since you dont like that comparision, a=how about the weimar republic?
nowhere in this question am I even hypothetically proposing that we print "Too much."
that is why weimar republic and zimbabwe are poor analogies. they printed too much.
We already monetize debt... so how much is too much? If this proposed system is akin to Weimar and Zimbabwe, how is our current system any different than Weimar and Zimbabwe?
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andif you havent noticed, we are going down the path of monetizing our debt, and what are we seeing? thats right higher gas prices, even though the price of a barrel of oil doesnt support the current gas prices. this in turn increases prices on food, and everything else we buy. and by the way, unless the federal government has changed their minds, a good part of the farm land in california has been eliminated due to a 2 inch fish.
so while our problems are not like zimbabwes yet, we are going down that road, and we need to be very careful to avoid hyperinflation.
indeed, we are going down that road, like I said, which is why I think this question is relevant.
Why does the federal government need tax revenue in the first place?
Because being an Empire is expensive. The only way to pay for the US colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and China was to levy federal income taxes.
The taxes provided additional income so that the US could engage in gun-boat diplomacy.
Because being an Empire is expensive. The only way to pay for the US colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and China was to levy federal income taxes.
The taxes provided additional income so that the US could engage in gun-boat diplomacy.
nowhere in this question am I even hypothetically proposing that we print "Too much."
that is why weimar republic and zimbabwe are poor analogies. they printed too much.
We already monetize debt... so how much is too much? If this proposed system is akin to Weimar and Zimbabwe, how is our current system any different than Weimar and Zimbabwe?
indeed, we are going down that road, like I said, which is why I think this question is relevant.
you recognize that we are already monetizing our debt, and you suggest that we eliminate federal taxes and just print the money we need to pay our debts, and then you say you are not proposing that we print too much money. and you claim that weimar and zimbabawe are poor analogies because they did print too much.
you are all over the subject with no direction. monetizing our debt is an extremely poor idea, and yet that is exactly what you are proposing that we do. you cant pay your mastercard bill with your visa card, and then the next month pat that off with your american express card, and after that use the discover card to pay that off. especially when you have to pay for a military, police force, court system etc. at some point you will run out of credit, and you will have to pay off the debt that you have accrued. and if you just print money to pay that debt, you will cause inflation, and if you go too far, and that line is quite fine by the way, you will end up with hyperinflation. and then we WILL be just like zimbabwe or the weimar republic.
I say go for it. Eliminate laws and (esp.) taxes which force people to use dollars and the government can borrow as much from the Federal Reserve as they wish. The Federal Reserve will, in turn, create as much as necessary to lend to the government (out of thin air). I'll bet that people will stop using dollars pretty quickly and the government will be forced to return to a backed currency (as Germany did in the 1920s).
Trouble is... that's about the same time that the Nazis (National Socialists) took over Germany with promises to cure all of society's woes...
I worry that America wouldn't be able to weather such a severe currency crisis without turning to some dictator? We are, after all, only ever one election away from a dictatorship.
Has this seriously not crossed anyone's mind yet, with all the bailouts and such? Why in the hell do we have federal taxes in the first place if we can just print money?
Either you're making some sarcastic point or else you're woefully uneducated in basic economics. But just in case you're the latter case..
If it was as easy and consequence-free as just printing money into perpetuity, all the countries that are currently in debt crisis mode (US included) would just do that instead of making difficult budget cuts. When you print money, you continually devalue the currency. The consequence will be domestic hyperinflation and skyrocketing interest rates on your debt because no one will want to buy it. Eventually, you'll end up at a point of collapse. Foreign investors are not so stupid as to be paid back in little pieces of paper that have lost nearly all of their value through this kind of monetary policy. Your money is only as good as peoples' faith in it.
Also federal taxes are necessary for a few little things like government infrastructure (running Congress, White House, embassy systems, agencies, etc.), major social net programs (social security, medicare, etc.), and the military
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