Truckers line up to protest fuel costs

[HemlockGrey]

[quote]We must kiss up to them or they will stop showering us with their love, right? Well guess what: they ain't showering us with anything but their contempt./quote]

This isn't at all what I was suggesting, I was just curious about how the government would practically go about getting the money they need.

[Darth Wong]

We must kiss up to them or they will stop showering us with their love, right? Well guess what: they ain't showering us with anything but their contempt.

This isn't at all what I was suggesting, I was just curious about how the government would practically go about getting the money they need.

Uh no, you said that they can't tax rich people because the rich will move their money out of the country. Regardless of whether you were pushing supply-side bullshit or asking a mere practical question, the point was answered: if you tax capital gains, the tax hits them the minute they try to pull their money out of the American corporations where they have it invested. And if they have it invested outside of America, well guess what: they already moved it out of the country, so you might as well forget about that wealth. They already stole it from America and put it elsewhere.

You can raise funds by taxing the rich. And the people telling you it's a bad idea are ... rich people! Well no kidding, I wonder why they'd say that.

[Zixinus]

The problem is that people have to put their money somewhere, and in times of great uncertainty, nothing is reliable. Even stuffing money into your mattress is unreliable; you don't know if inflation will shoot up.

This is why some people still want the gold standard back: in times of uncertainty, the value of gold won't change.

Of course current economics disallow this for a reason I don't quite understand (other then the fact that there is not enough gold worldwide to cover the financial movement of entire nations).

[Starglider]

This is why some people still want the gold standard back: in times of uncertainty, the value of gold won't change.

Of course it will. Gold has some industrial uses, but most of its value comes from its ornamental/prestige use and as a 'store of value', i.e. being valuable because people consider it valuable. Gold prices fluctuate like any other commodity; I would say that it has less intrinsic value than commodities traded for real economic uses, as opposed to just hoarding it.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is that people have to put their money somewhere, and in times of great uncertainty, nothing is reliable. Even stuffing money into your mattress is unreliable; you don't know if inflation will shoot up.

This is why some people still want the gold standard back: in times of uncertainty, the value of gold won't change.

You could say the same thing about aluminum: it's tangible and has value (arguably much more intrinsic value than gold), but I never hear anyone agitating for an aluminum standard currency. I think the yearning for the gold standard is nothing more than "good old days" nonsense.

[Ryan Thunder]

The problem is that people have to put their money somewhere, and in times of great uncertainty, nothing is reliable. Even stuffing money into your mattress is unreliable; you don't know if inflation will shoot up.

This is why some people still want the gold standard back: in times of uncertainty, the value of gold won't change.

You could say the same thing about aluminum: it's tangible and has value (arguably much more intrinsic value than gold), but I never hear anyone agitating for an aluminum standard currency. I think the yearning for the gold standard is nothing more than "good old days" nonsense.

While it may be true in the cases of people who actually bother to think about the problem, I'm sure the rest are just thinking "gold = stable", rather than "gold is the best substance to use for this and here's why."

[Admiral Valdemar]

Aluminium is far more abundant than gold, but also far harder to extract because of the energy needed to refine its ore. The reason gold is used, is because there is still, after all these years, very little of the stuff floating around freely. It doesn't corrode, has already been used as a form of currency and no one can flood the market with far more of it if they happen to have the energy to power aluminium mining operations.

Generally, it's just a stable and limited form for trade, which is where the benefit is. Unlike dollars, which are being produced by the warehouse full every day, or even far more useful metals like copper (in fact, foreclosed houses are being raided for their copper wiring and piping).

You could use even rarer metals like indium, but that would remove such elements from their practical use. Aluminium and indium are very useful for all kinds of things, while gold has fewer such uses and is primarily used as a show of extravagance (even platinum, the most expensive commonly traded precious metal, has applications in science and engineering that would warrant it being kept aside).

[Sea Skimmer]

Gold has plenty of commercial uses that would skyrocket if it wasn’t so hoarded and expensive, like connectors on high end stereo equipment, reflective coatings, liners on shaped charge anti tank weapons ect…

[Admiral Valdemar]

Gold has plenty of commercial uses that would skyrocket if it wasn’t so hoarded and expensive, like connectors on high end stereo equipment, reflective coatings, liners on shaped charge anti tank weapons ect…

There are those, yes. I never said it was a useless metal, just that the vast majority of it is used as a non-fiat form of currency down to historical actions and its basic properties.

I would think that, given a major crash, gold would be second to oil and food. In the end, gold is only a storage of worth (aside from the other properties it has as a non-corrosive coating element, thermal conductor etc.) and if someone has a load of grain and heating oil to power and heat their home, then they're not going to part with it for an otherwise useless lump of metal, pretty as it is.

[The Yosemite Bear]

wan't this the plot line of the movie "Convoy" based on the country western song?