Yes but to converge the two sides have to acknowledge the arguments of the other side, unfortunately I am probably not arguing well enough and Im perfectly willing to just give up.

Anyway you seem to be able to research complicated topics well, you can read up about the history and end of the gold standard and about deflation for your own sake in your own time :-)

Fighting against fiat money, reserve banks, inflation and national debt is like fighting against democracy or free speech.
Sometimes democracy gives you Trump, sometimes free speech gives you porn (or worse, Fox news), sometimes the economy gets out of hand, but mostly these things work better than their alternatives and prevent or minimize crashes, based on the experience of the last 200 years. Every time someone thought better, they made things worse.

No, the point of discussion to come to an understanding IMO, not to just argue.

You KNOW this, eh? I think you just believe that, but Ok, then where do we get a well functioning reserve bank? We certainly don’t have one now, we don’t even have a fully staffed reserve board capable of doing business. The gold standard isn’t constantly relying on a functioning fed….good thing because we haven’t had one for decades and don’t seem likely to have one anytime in the near future….by design.

Coin clipping went out with edge minting. Please. Nobody was using pieces of 8 of $20 coins.

That is the point of discussion, right?

I know a true gold standard is inferior to a well functioning reserve bank issuing paper money and an international exchange standard based on mutual trade agreements.

I am not sure I can explain it well or convince you, but I like you so I try.

Unfortunately the matter seems to be complicated.

The fact that something has, as you put it, "real" value is actually a bad thing, as clipping gold coins is as old as gold coins.

So let us assume gold coins are out and we are going to use some form of symbolic money...

Nope this will not fit in this thread.

A German mark had value….until it didn’t. Your opinion of “fiat money” isn’t universal by any stretch. You say it’s universally better. I wholeheartedly disagree, and point to Germany and Venezuela as proof. They aren’t outliers either, (looking at Africa).

Gold is useful and valuable. Digital footprints aren’t. Paper notes aren’t. Printed circuits, connectors, anti oxidation, actual physical money, jewelry, etc. gold has intrinsic value, a dollar bill has about 13210 joules, so its intrinsic worth is about 1 small 1 gram stick as kindling and little more….no matter if it’s a $1 or $500 bill or a check for billions. Again, see Germany, where bills were more valuable as firewood than money.

This deflation idea again. Give me 3 examples of deflation harming/ending a nation on the gold standard please, I’ve never heard of it happening. (Edit: as far as I can find, I’m no economics professor, for the most part the gold standard was abandoned worldwide in the early 1930’s and the last remnants removed in the early 70’s by Nixon)

Explain how unsecured notes guard against speculation….don’t just claim it. I don’t see it, people made a mint short selling Venezuelan (and other failed) dollars….speculating they would crash….they did. What?

GDP is the metric that imparts value to unsecured notes offered by countries.

I think you had a mini stroke, the paragraph starting USofA is a word salad with no meaning.

Name 3. I named Germany post ww1….they didn’t get to borrow or ignore their debts. What are you talking about?

So, the only ones that don’t/can’t borrow are all the ones that need to.

Pretending basing your dollar on Bitcoin is the same as basing it on gold is outrageous idiotic bullshit. Just nonsense. Utterly moronic and pure fantasy. Don’t try moving the goalposts, that’s what you said.

Yes, the fed will take gold. They don’t take Bitcoin, do they? How about shells? Pebbles?

Jesus, you just want to argue. You’re rambling, switching positions and going off on tangents.
It’s not about whether someone might accept it, it’s about whether it’s universally accepted at one value and about holding its accepted long term value. People once gladly accepted beanie babies as payment….stupid people.
Arcata Ca printed up Arcata dollars….you could get them cheap, businesses took them. Wanna put your nest egg into them? You say that’s good money, as good as dollars. I’ll sell them to you for gold, and let’s see who’s doing better in 10 years. Or I’ll sell you pebbles for gold. Any currency you want, I’ll sell you for gold. How’s that working with pebbles or shells? Can you buy currency with them?

It has everything to do with how much it’s worth. Stop jumping subjects because your point is failing to convince. An economy based on pebbles fails because their neighbors don’t value pebbles, but if their pebbles are gold, they succeed because gold is valued universally.

What are you talking about, the gold standard’s ability to keep up? Huh?! No keep up necessary, no slow down required, gold trades exactly as fast as everything else. What is this nonsense?!?

You mean you can’t overspend and go deep into debt?! And that’s bad?! In your opinion, not many economists….and what makes you think you can’t borrow against gold? Secured loans are easier and cheaper to come by. WHAT?!?

Yes, unsecured paper money can just be printed forever, you CAN “sell the universe”. (Or sell dollars who’s overall value is based on your country’s value) over and over, then print more and sell 9/10 again, print more, sell again. Eventually that money is worth less than it costs to print, and your creditors get paid off in dollars worth a tiny fraction of what they lent you. Not if it’s backed with gold.

Miracle cure?!? Quote it. I think you misread. Secured notes being better than unsecured notes is not “miracle cure” or perfection, it’s just measurably better, safer, and more stable. No system is perfect.

Yes, but day to day you don’t know if you need .05 of one for groceries or a wheelbarrow full. It’s unstable. That’s the entire point I’m making.

Unsecured “tokens” with no intrinsic value (like gold has) are only worth what a moron will pay….today. That varies wildly.

Gold is worth what nations have agreed is it’s value worldwide (with minor local variation)….and it has actual uses, and a finite measurable volume.

A dollar has value if you can buy shit for a dollar.

Gold likewise has no exchange value if you cant exchange it for goods and services. Its rare and chemically stable and good for memorial coins, has many technical uses and looks cute, but otherwise it hardly matters what symbol for money you choose. There is 200 years of experience with fiat money and gold and silver standards and fiat money has been better, not just usually better or better in some scenario, universally better.

Symbolic money is practical and facilitates quicker turn around prevents deflation makes speculative runs on currency harder and smoothes the economic bumps in the road in general.

GDP is just a metric. Not a bad one but not the actual goal.

USofA is teh most developed. Should have used growing. Deflation in an economy that is growing kills growth.

Restarting countries not only get to ignore their debts, they immediatelly start borrowing again.

The only countries that dont borrow are countries no-one will lend to and countries so rich in some silly resource they can float high in the international currency system without borrowing. Borrowing is good for bussiness.

What is outrageous idiotic bullshit? Believing pegging the value of your paper note to some hoarded luxury makes it a better representation of the mean value of goods and services bought and sold? I could do without gold except for the jacks on my audio cables (just kidding). It does not matter what I exchange for food and gas, if it gets me food and gas, its good money.

Money is what you can pay taxes with. Do they take gold?

If you insist your dollar has the value of some weight of gold how does that influence the willingness of someone else to sell you shit? Unless they specifically intend to buy gold at a fixed price they dont care. They are going to use your dolar to buy some other shit from someone else. So if you take the actual currency out of the equation, when you decide on buying and selling shit you are intuitively comparing that decision with all the other decisions about buying and sellin that you know of. The currency is just a good way to count the measure of usefullness of a product or service and compare among many. Pebbles, bottletops, dollars, gold, pearls, all just a number.

A dollar could be backed by gold or it could not, this has zero impact on the transactions made. What matters is how many transactions are made, at what value, and how much money is available to the entire marketplace in a given period of time. Transactions quickly pass the ability of a gold standard to keep up. If you want a gold standard you have to slow transactions down because you dont have the money for them.

This is why markets need some regulation, otherwise someone might sell the universe twice and then default on one. But a gold standard, at least the type of gold standard I believe was talked about in this thread as a miracle cure, would be too limiting.

If the dollar has no actual value…you’re sunk from the start.

Improving gdp is the only way to add value today….much easier said than done, and possible to go backwards at light speed.

Are you calling the US a developing country? Deflation isn’t a concern for most. It’s pretty rare.

If you improve the economy artificially, the bill will come due someday inconvenient and likely cause depression, not just recession.

Restarting countries didn’t all borrow, some tried to take over the world and ignore all their debts. Just saying.

If you have gold backing your dollar, even if your dollar somehow collapsed you’ve still got all the gold. That’s just one reason it’s smart. If you don’t issue dollars for every ounce of gold in reserve, you can add dollars without the risk of inflation, then remove them when possible.

You keep saying it has no advantages, I’ve listed many.

Outrageous idiotic bullshit. Gold is a commodity universally valued. Bitcoin is worse than nothing, it costs money just by existing and has absolutely no value besides what idiots will pay, that’s like basing your economy on beanie babies and saying it’s the same as physical gold. WTF man?

If youre a normal country you are always living on credit, if for no other reason, then because it is super easy and cheap to borrow. Also you have to, to make it to the next pay check (tax collection). First your subjects have to produce and sell, then you can collect taxes.

You dont base the value of the dollar on anything. You offer it as a commodity to the market. If your economy sucks or you print too much money the dollar goes down, which can help the economy. Printing money doesnt automatically help the economy though, it just creates space and time to make it possible for the economy to improve.

Improving the economy means creating more or better products and services that are in demand at a competitive cost. Governments in non-dictatorial countries cant really do that directly, they can only create the conditions for this to happen.

Moderate inflation hardly plays a part, except as a moderator (is that a pun?) of shocks. Deflation (and a strong gold standard in a developing economy IS deflation) is deadly, it makes the economy less flexible, less able to adjust.

If you never improve your ecomomy, all you will have left will be to bitch about inflation.

What is too much debt, too much inflation, too much intervention? I wish economics was a science.

Theoretically the economy can get to be so bad that the structure collapses, there are countries which have notoriously bad historical records, and yet every time they restart they have to borrow money to get things going again. Reserves in general are useless. Production, services and a functioning market, recursive production of valuable goods and services which freely and easily find customers is the only thing you can consider a reliable pillar of civilization. Currency is one of those goods and services.

If for any reason yor currency cant freely circulate (see China or the USSR errr... Russia) you can hardly be a superpower, at least not in the economic sense.

Adopting a gold standard so strong that it would destroy the international dollar standard has no advantage for the USofA or for any developed first world country. Even just having the Euro wreaks havoc in weaker European countries economies, but that is another can of worms.

A lot of what is wrong about the gold standard would apply if a country decided to adopt bitcoin as its sole currency btw.

No!

A gold standard provides none of the perceived advantages.
There was never any stability under a gold standard.
Unless its just a Bretton-Woods type "gold" standard where the gold is symbolic. The fed printing money is what keeps economy swings moderate.

I certainly hope so, 0-.25% doesn’t cover administrative costs for basically free loans.
If they go slow, it shouldn’t stall….cool off a bit, sure. That’s acceptable.

Personally, I think it all became funny money when Nixon dropped the gold standard, and I would support returning to it, painful as it would be. At least the dollar would have some permanent fairly predictable value. (And the fed would be forced to stop printing more money to pay government debts, which causes inflation).

God I hope that isn't Kraft singles... May as well be hitting them with gold leaf with as expensive as that crap is.

Ahh... The Ecstasy of Gold

If vegetable consumption is graphed per capita, whats up with gold medals?

Something interesting this lead me to check out. Obviously the US seem to dominate the golds, but in the years the USSR competed, they got 395 to America's 373. Each had one home Olympics in that time, in which the other didn't compete.

I haven't gone into this any deeper, I just found it interesting in a 'today I learned' kind of way.

* a h e m *

wisdom can be displayed at any age.

and age is a teacher...but not all pay attention.

there's a reason the phrases "from the mouth of babes" and "no fool like an old fool" will be passed on to the next generations. it is universally true.

even @18 or 19...or even matt gaetz girlfriend's age, 17...the demonstrative truth is SHE IS A VALEDICTORIAN and she has the sapience (you can look it up) to understand what she is condemning.*

am STILL unconfident that you believe what you're saying (it'd be an insult to both of us). have to be a wag of a satrist. no one is so subtly self-owning w/o some thread of chicanery showing.

just the juxtaposing of "well read" and "idiot" in the same sentence is A SCREAM!! man! that's good!

it's a Carlin skit. "jumbo shrimp"

makes me smile.

[if you're using newt as an example of a bad example, it's a bad example of a bad example. the low-hanging fruit here would be, it's unlikely bk33/tt ever had to worry about any unwanted pregnancy other than their own. doubt they've ever even stroked a petting zoo beaver.

* to be fair; its' Republican fly fodder. hardly 'gold star' level.