Skeeter, I don't want to get sucked off into evo/cre debates. My point was more about evaluating how people hold views in different areas, and what one might glean from that. I think you have to admit that Ron Paul is quite a ways out on the tail of the distribution on his monetary views. This does not make him wrong. But I see he does similar things in other fields, and at least in biology I know enough to judge him on it, and he is wrong. I'm interested in understanding things. Monetary policy interests me, and we clearly are living in a time when many views will be in flux and likely some major changes will occur.
The notion of digging for some substance so you can enable trade has always struck me as nutty. But just because I think its nutty, does not mean it is. Thats what I'd like to understand.
AFAIK, nearly 100% of the current standard of living of a closed (bounded) economic system depends on the current productivity of that system. Neither a stockpile of gold, or green paper, or electronic entries in a computer can change that. (There are clearly shorter term effects from stockpiling goods, I'm ignoring the "weather" of economic "climate" here!) Hence a large fraction of monetary policy strikes me as not addressing the key point. SS, MC, and healthcare are great examples. Forget the stupid "unfunded liabilities" and SS accounting crap. It always comes down to the current workers supporting the current retirees, so if you know that ratio is shifting you have to shift productivity, or accept decreased living standards. If we ran surpluses and accumulated the funds in accounts, or even mined gold and stockpiled mountains of it, it would not change this.
The fundamental monetary problem is we have promoted the notion that making things is no more important than whizzing money around, so consequently America is very good at whizzing money around, and increasingly more reliant on foreigners to actually produce our standard of living. In the end, the economic boundary is the planet, so the USA can expect to shift downwards towards the global mean as a result of our policies. |
