Are you referring to the law that uses the big federal government to stomp on the states rights of the small government that want to charge tax on gold and silver sales?

Its terrible because it uses the big federal government to stomp on the states rights of the small government. Which for a "libertarian" like Ron Paul who is all about states rights to the point he wants to undermine the functional checks and balances laid out in the constitution to place state rights above constitutional rights of people then that is a really bad thing. One would assume. Butnah?

I don't see any reason why precious metals should receive more favorable tax treatment than other valuables.

I'm glad you agree that it's unconstitutional. Poor Ron Paul, probably hired somebody else to draft that bill and didn't bother to find out what they had written.

I don't want anything. I was asking a question.

Why? You know the answer: of course you're not taxed the second year.

because gold and silver should be money?

according to wookie, everything is a currency so, "i dont see any reason why us dollars should receive more favorable tax treatment than other currencies". errr...

anyway, here is ron paul:

you can read the other parts of his floor speech regarding the free competition in currency act - right here - text of floor speech

gold and silver should be allowed to function as money. the 'clearly inhibiting' laws (your words!) that are placed on it that result in the us dollar hegemony should be repealed.

the poor and middle class should have access to a currency that is not being constantly devalued by our government.

you seem awfully scared of a competing currency. why?

so some people would like to use gold and silver or gold and silver backed notes and allow others access to them instead of the usd. what is so bad about this? what is making you freak out so much?

after all, aren't gold and silver in a bubble right now anyway, so you could have some good ol internet LoLz with phill at all of the idiot conspiritards that exchanged their USD for gold and silver notes that are going to lose all their value?

why so scared homie? more work at the local bank branch for you?

I don't have a problem with Libya. I don't have a problem with Al Alwaki. I wish Gitmo was closed but I recognize the political reality that that just wasn't going to happen right now. I am glad we're not sending anyone new there.

I really really hate that the Haditha guys got off scot-free. But I don't know if that's Obama's fault.

The NDAA troubles me. But I've heard plenty of other scary things coming out of govt that didn't materialize into anything.

I'm not thrilled about the medical MJ closings, but so far they seem to be coming only in cities that want to get rid of them anyway and are using the Justice Dept to do their dirty work.

I am definitely troubled by some of the stuff I've read about drone strikes at funerals etc. But at the same time I remember when Obama took office there was a lot of talk about how unstable that whole area of Afghanistan/Pakistan is and how much the Taliban had taken root in Pakistan. Maybe by keeping the fight to them we're keeping a possible de-stablization of Pakistan from occurring.

I believe blowback occurs in stuff like us arming OBL in the first place. But I don't hold much water in the theory that we're creating a bunch of new terrorists every second over there. The people who hate our guts already hate our guts. And there are certain groups that only understand getting hit in the mouth, and nothing else (IE - appeasement alone will never work). If blowback was 100% real the Japanese should be suicide bombing us to this day. I tend to think blowback is overrated when you're already at war with someone.

I don't know. What I do know is we only have like 5% of the whole story, just by the necessity of international diplomacy and war strategy. For the same reason while I was deeply troubled about Bush invading Iraq, I didn't really feel like I had enough info. to fully condemn it until history was written that there were no WMDs and we got into a gigantic quagmire.

Would it shock me if when all the history is written that the drone strikes go down as a massive abuse and failure? No. Would it shock me if this gets looked back on as the moment we turned the tide on Islamic fundamentalism and, once the Arab spring settles down, ushered in a new era of relative peace in that region? No. But I do think that arm-chair QB assessments right now based on some hyperbolic Greenwald rants are likely to not stand the test of history.

I'm not really stating my point very well. But basically I tend to take the longer view on anything where we have such incomplete information as what the hell we're actually doing over there and why. I even gave GWB the benefit of the doubt for a while, until one by one his decisions turned to crapola. Obama has made pretty good decisions imo on the stuff that either is more immediately apparent or where the results come a lot quicker than international relations and the war on terror.

So in summation. Some stuff is troubling. But not nearly enough to overcome all the stuff about RP or the republicans that I'm deeply troubled about. I know many of you don't agree with me but at least I hope you give me some credit for throwing all my ideas out there for scrutiny and attack, unlike many of the people who constantly attack me with nothing but snark and open-ended vague questions. Or the whole brown-baby killer thing.

Why not? I've realized gains.

And yes, I knew the answer, but I didn't know if you knew, and it's important to establish that before we move on.

So gold and silver aren't money right now? Ben Bernake was right!


Gold and silver, but not diamonds? Salt? Soap? Chickens?

Why is Ron Paul afraid of poultry-backed currency? He probably knows that gold and silver are in a bubble, but delicious chickenbucks have an intrinsic nutritional value.

I'm not freaking out, I'm being kind enough to educate you. Remember like yesterday? When you didn't know what art 1 section 10 was? Now you do! Learning! Yay.

Anyway, you never did take a stab at my Somalia question. People who live under actual anarchy, with no government of any sort, prefer to transact in USD. Why don't they use gold?

Uh, again, we do currently have competing currencies. USD has won that competition, both within the US and in many places internationally. So I disagree with the premise of your question.

yikes :/....im really surprised you are not wildly successful in finance or business

best of luck

but for your first obtuse thoughts on why gold and silver and not salt, soap, chickens or diamonds, here is ron paul, again, from the same floor speech linked above

again, best of luck with your immense riches and fiat bucks

and you are always a welcome guest to appear on the rootbone political hour, so that offer is still on the table and we will even pay in either USD or silver ounces

If gold shouldnt be taxed to allow it to better be used as currency in the states that do tax it then how about my example of earlier in the thread where people may want to use electric goods as a currency - should the sales tax be removed from iPods and flatscreen TVs?

Of course if you dont believe in tax this is an easy question to answer, but in this example please answer from the point of view of a normal person who believes in the constitution and the ability of the state to set sales taxes and so on.

Gold and silver are so great they need special tax treatment to outcompete salt as a currency?

Even if we grant that Ron Paul's gibberish is all correctish, why doesn't some other country use gold and silver as money? Anywhere in the world? The sales tax of Oklahoma reaches to the Gulf of Aden?

The second year, by holding on to your US dollars, you've only realized a gain measured in euros, not when you measure in US dollars though.

So not only do we need to stop states from charging sales tax, we also need to stop the IRS from doing calculations in dollars at all? I don't even know how that would work, the IRS asks you what currency you'd like your taxes to be denominated in each year?

Can we force McDonalds and Wal Mart to take gold and silver? That would probably help the uptake of it as an alternate currency so its worth having the federal government forcing them to do so amirite.

the swiss franc used to be backed by 40% gold up until 2000. it experienced historically low inflation and was regarded as the safe-haven currency of the world.

even in 2005 after a big gold selling program the swiss national bank still had 20% gold reserves

the swiss franc continued to appreciate against the dollar and euro as it retained its safe-haven status.

last year it was pegged by the snb to 1.2 euro, and the franc fell 8.8 against the euro and 9.5% against the usd in 15 minutes

im afraid that a discussion of governments and central banks competitively devaluing their currencies may be beyond the scope of understanding for someone struggling with why gold and silver would be a superior basis or a currency rather than salt or chickens, so i will just leave you with the above info.

if you are really in the mood to read, i suggest looking into why the australian dollar has gained so much value in the last decade. (hint: commodity exports!)

And we're back to the "inhibition = prohibition" argument. That's false, btw.

We're also back to the "inflation is de facto bad" argument too.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

The reason why central banks dont use the gold standard anymore is demonstrated nicely in the Eurozone right now as countries feel the squeeze and cant quantative ease like Britain and America (and other of course) to stimulate activity. The market and the economists have spoken, gold as a currency is just flat out wrong. Fiat is superior.

You realize Bush stopped sending new prisoners there a couple of years before Obama was elected, right? Because you're phrasing this in a way that implies that Obama should get credit for this.

What about Time Based Money, or Ithaca Hours currency? These are legal and functioning alternate currencies in use today. And they don't suffer from the LOLtardency of using precious metals. What would L.Ron think, and what do the Ronulans think, about these real world alternatives?

Just like no one is prohibited from making an OS to compete with Windows. Anyone can do it, so obviously they can never have a monopoly.

Anyway, I never said anything to indicate that I think "inhibition = prohibition". Clearly, it's not the same. Inhibition is a much subtler way of making what you want to happen happen without being obviously tyrannical. Way superior from a political stance.

What does that matter? I've realized a gain.

Which is why by 1998 it surged to 0.3% of official Forex Reserves. That's only a little lower than the 69.3% of reserves that were worthless USD fiat bucks!

Whoops! Next time you're poorly paraphrasing Wikipedia you should probably just not include this sentence because it seems to wildly contradict your point.

So you have no idea why people in other countries prefer USD? Maybe they haven't watched enough Youtube videos.

What is the economic argument that a strong currency is good? Switzerland decided to peg its currency to the Euro because "The current massive overvaluation of the Swiss franc poses an acute threat to the Swiss economy and carries the risk of a deflationary development,"
If a hard currency is desired there is no reason that to introduce currency competition and the resultant economic inefficiency. A simple change to Fed policy could get the "desired" result.

You still have to worry about inflation based on your bank's relative velocity and gravitational field.


Wat?

The IRS has elected to operate in one currency and to measure gains in one currency. You have not realized a gain measured in US dollars, as you have not increased your amount of US dollars. This isn't hard. Your "OMG I'm not taxed if I hold USD" is pretty hollow, because it's trivial that the USD will never appreciate the USD. Like, you're not taxed on your Euros if they don't appreciate against the USD either. You're not taxed on your stocks, gold, salt, or oil if they don't appreciate against the USD.