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A bill recently introduced in Texas seeks to obliterate the Federal Reserve's much-maligned monopoly on currency by establishing gold and silver as legal tender — but the groundbreaking legislation, if passed, would also prohibit those precious metals from being seized by State authorities.
[...] Senator Bob Hall introduced the bill last month, which, the Tenth Amendment Center explains, "declares specifically that certain gold and silver coins are legal tender, and prohibits any tax, charge, assessment, fee, or penalty on any exchange of Federal Reserve notes (dollars) for gold or silver. The bill authorizes the payment of taxes and fees in gold & silver in certain circumstances. It would also prohibit the seizure of gold or silver by state authorities."
Would this matter in a nation where money is mostly plastic nowadays anyway?
Source: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/texas-bill-gold-silver-money-federal-reserve/
(Score: 5, Informative) by lubricus on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:56PM (4 children)
Before we get into another ridiculous theoretical argument about the merits or problems of fiat currency, let's look at the actual bill:
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/85R/billtext/pdf/SB02097I.pdf#navpanes=0/ [state.tx.us]
Under the bill, gold and silver coins are narrowly defined.
For gold:
and for silver:
This exposes the bill even more clearly than similar gold-bug aspirations for the scam that it is: a ploy to self-enrich by excluding specific assets from taxation by declaring them "currency", despite the inherent impractically of a metal-based currency system.
The bill implicitly recognizes this also by establishing "dollar values" for the coins in all transactions. (I'm not going to copy and paste the whole section, if you really think that a gold and silver based economy is a good idea, you can read through the bill yourself.) In short, it turns any place accepting state payments into a spot exchange for gold and silver. <sarcasm> I'm sure that Texas state institutions will operate smoothly under that scenario </sarcasm>.
Let's take a moment and think through and example. Let's say you're part of the administration at the University of Texas. The average time for a bachelor's degree in the US is currently around 6 years (roughly yada yada). Over the last 6 years, the value of gold has varied from over $1800 / oz. to below $1100 / oz. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/gold.aspx?timeframe=6y/ [nasdaq.com] . Silver has ranged from over $45 / oz to less than $15 / oz http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/silver.aspx?timeframe=6y/ [nasdaq.com]. (Note this bill requires you to accept both, but of course only of those specific coins I'm sure the writer of the bill has interests in). How do you plan / budget / operate in this scenario? The answer is you couldn't.
But who cares? GOLD!!!!
This bill exemplifies short-sighted, selfish, patronizing BS being currently being dished out recently. I'm ashamed at Soylent for falling for it.
... sorry about the typos
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday April 16 2017, @03:53PM
Not at all. They are working around the reality that Texas is forbidden from doing the logical thing and simply coining its own. It is allowed, in fact required to, accept properly coined, lawful money. Since the U.S. Treasury has not made nearly enough they have decided to accept the coinage of other countries and established rules to regulate it.
See above where I provide more detail.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:56PM
Do the University of Texas have access to the state coffers?
In that case they can compensate for fluctuations that way.
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Monday April 17 2017, @01:45AM (1 child)
That's one way to look at it.
Alternatively, and just as valid: The value of a dollar has fluctuated from less than 1/1800 to over 1/1100 of an ounce of gold.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @02:52AM
Unless everything else varied like that, saying that the dollar varied over that range is dishonest.