Ron Paul and our Federal Reserve

we don't need gold, because our dollar is backed by the military. ron paul understands this point as clearly as anyone.

must.keep.scheme.going.as.long.as.possible.

yep. as septimius severus told his sons on his deathbed: "pay the soldiers first. the rest don't matter."

I really don't see a huge need to defense spending to decrease. 25% of the total defense budget is soldiers pay and benefits. Another 25% is operational costs (ie. war, training, etc). The rest is R&D, procurement, admin, etc.

DoD is also only 20% of the overall federal budget and ~5% of GDP. It is also one of the actual jobs of the Federal government.

here's what i don't get. a few years back you had all these Fed apologists coming out, defending our inflationary monetary policy by saying that we are essentially extracting seignorage income from countries that run current account surpluses against us. fine. we have the world's biggest guns and we aren't afraid to use them to make sure every oil bourse accepts on USD, which ensures that we can run external deficits forever without tears.

but then: WHY do we have to pay taxes as american citizens? after rome went full empire, italians lived solely off the taxes from the provincials. why don't we just print more benny bux and stick it to opec, latam and asia. give us your oil, your commodities and your labor, and we give you USD.

so fuck the 999 plan, vote for my "000 plan."

I don't know, aren't we following that plan? I mean an ever increasing number of citizens aren't paying taxes.

Now I usually use this as fodder for my rants, but a very large section doesn't contribute to the fed budget. This is increasing and I can understand why. No one wants to pay taxes and if you can get away with letting people off the hook you basically guarantee a voting block.

I think you need people paying into the system. I am so pissed and rage so much because I DO pay into the system. If I didn't I wouldn't give two shits. A whole nation of people not caring is a bad idea.

well i guess you are to the left of me on this one, ant, because i say no taxes for anyone. we did not have a federal income tax when we were busy knocking the UK off its perch as the preeminent global industrial power and we did just fine. and now that we are the world's spartans let everyone else be our helots.

Blame the dual mandate LIBOR. The Fed's main task should be to control interest rates, not full employment.

Also, not every rich person has a Scrooge McDuck portfolio. Most own small businesses which are being hurt by the Fed's actions.

Yes, we do need these bases. It is called a staging area. You can't just fly missions from the USA. You need places to strike from.

Leaving the ME would be a disaster. This is the global flash point. Oil, like it or not, runs the world. We need it. China is snapping up reserves in Africa. Russia has its own. We need to control the ME. Plus, this ensures that oil will be priced in dollars, which benefits the US.

If we go bankrupt, it will not be because of military spending.

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Could we please have the rest of that clip? Nothing like cutting him off in mid sentence.

Can't find the full-clip. Friedman has been clear on his preference for abolishing the Federal Reserve. He also personally endorsed Ron Paul.

"I strongly support Ron Paul. We very badly need to have more representatives in the House who understand in a principled way the importance of property rights and religious freedom." - Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Economist

Milton Friedman's protege and respected economist in his own right, Thomas Sowell, went as far to call the Fed a cancer and also supports abolishing it.