ron paul=awesome/kickass?

[kwame k]

4k people at a rally in Michigan

In our defense....there were no good concerts tonight

[knuckleboner]

You do realize people invested with gold-based currencies for a very, very long time, right?

You can't suddenly create gold out of thin air. You're also talking about a system that has worked and been accepted world wide for thousands of years.

not for 40 years. and in the intervening decades, our consumption of gold for non-monetary use has increased quite a bit.

when ron paul talks about the need to return to the gold standard he's saying that he doesn't like inflation. many of his followers proclaim that returning to a gold standard will be a hedge against inflation. will all investment cease? no. but if enough people view the gold-based dollars as a way to avoid inflation, many of them are going to think of it as a safe currency that will appreciate in value on its own, and many therefore will decide against separate investments.

still, that's an aside. i think the real reasons the gold standard is foolish is because a) as kwame said, the implementation will be damn near disastrous. and b) the very fact that you CAN'T print more gold out of thin air is problematic. growth in the money supply is a very good thing if one has a growing population and one wants a growing economy. really hard to have increasing GDP when more people are chasing the same amount of dollars.

[kwame k]

A big fear is how a consumer based economy is going to thrive on a Gold Standard.......we fucked ourselves with NAFTA and it's only now that manufacturing jobs are coming back and we're not even close to where we need to be in that regards. So, in the short term, it'll never work!

To me the whole thing is an isolationist view and naive in a World based economy.

We need an answer for what we're doing but a Gold Standard, right now, is not it

[Seshmeister]

[dazzlindino]

HAHA...lol...that would make the second gay president....

[Dr. Love]

not for 40 years. and in the intervening decades, our consumption of gold for non-monetary use has increased quite a bit.

when ron paul talks about the need to return to the gold standard he's saying that he doesn't like inflation. many of his followers proclaim that returning to a gold standard will be a hedge against inflation. will all investment cease? no. but if enough people view the gold-based dollars as a way to avoid inflation, many of them are going to think of it as a safe currency that will appreciate in value on its own, and many therefore will decide against separate investments.

still, that's an aside. i think the real reasons the gold standard is foolish is because a) as kwame said, the implementation will be damn near disastrous. and b) the very fact that you CAN'T print more gold out of thin air is problematic. growth in the money supply is a very good thing if one has a growing population and one wants a growing economy. really hard to have increasing GDP when more people are chasing the same amount of dollars.

40 years huh... that sure is a long time!

The rest of it is a lot of conjecture.

But I'm interested. What would you/kwame suggest as an alternative strategy to dealing with the issues? Or do you believe they aren't problems?

[Dr. Love]

A big fear is how a consumer based economy is going to thrive on a Gold Standard.......we fucked ourselves with NAFTA and it's only now that manufacturing jobs are coming back and we're not even close to where we need to be in that regards. So, in the short term, it'll never work!

To me the whole thing is an isolationist view and naive in a World based economy.

We need an answer for what we're doing but a Gold Standard, right now, is not it

I recommend you vote with your head and not with your heart ... don't be afraid of change. But as I said, if you think it's the wrong idea, what do you or your preferred candidate propose as an alternate solution?

[Dr. Love]

Out of 9.8 Million people....



Like, wow.

If only we could figure out how to distill Lounge's posts into a liquid of some kind.



We could control the world's supply of bitter.

[kwame k]

I recommend you vote with your head and not with your heart ... don't be afraid of change. But as I said, if you think it's the wrong idea, what do you or your preferred candidate propose as an alternate solution?

Simple.....don't spend more than the GDP.

Kinda like everyone's household budget....you have x amount of money meaning you can only spend x amount of money after the bills are paid!

[Dr. Love]

Do you mean GDP or tax revenues (income)?

Also, which candidates actually put forward plans that accomplish that goal?

[Dr. Love]

GRAPH: Obama ‘Withdrawal’ Plan Would Leave More Troops In Afghanistan Than When He Began His Presidency
By Zaid Jilani on Jun 22, 2011 at 11:03 am
Today, President Obama is expected to announce the withdrawal of as many as 33,000 troops from the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2012. While this announcement is largely being portrayed as a serious reduction of troops, it is important to look at the numbers in context.
ThinkProgress has assembled the following graph showing that if the reductions are carried out as planned, the United States would still have far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration:


This means that the troop reduction would not put us much closer to actually ending the war by the end of 2012. Rather this would simply scale back the second surge of 30,000 troops that President Obama announced in December 2009. It would also maintain the first surge of 17,000 troops Obama ordered upon entering office. This comes at a time when a record number of Americans want to end the war in Afghanistan and the costs of which are putting the United States deeper into debt.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/06/22/250807/obamas-troop-reduction-afghanistan/?mobile=nc

In other news... we continue to bankrupt ourselves with a war we should no longer be involved in.

[VH Drummer]

Ron was on campus here yesterday for a rally. I've never been to any kind of political rally but I figured I'd go check it out. The auditorium was completely packed which surprised me. I was/am pretty indifferent to Paul and it was interesting to hear him speak in person. I'm not a big fan of his stance on the Federal Reserve, although I share his frustration with our seemingly broken system. I do fully agree with him in cutting spending abroad and investing domestically first and foremost. Also, while I lean to a pro-choice stance, I appreciate his stance to not let the federal government regulate abortion policy. I find him to be a pretty interesting figure, surely more interesting than Romney the robot or Santorum the "Santorum." Although we had an open primary today, I did not vote. I'm not a Republican and I am not comfortable with the idea of ambushing the Republicans with apathetic votes.

[Dr. Love]

Aside from the bottom tag (which is wishful thinking), yes, 4k people is a big deal in context.

[Dr. Love]

[VH Drummer]

This was my vantage point from MSU yesterday: