Me: Son, you're too young to have sex. You are not equipped to deal with the consequences. It would destroy your life. But, if you do decide to have sex, you should use protection. It will be your job to purchase such protection, because that is part of the responsibility of the act.
This is the message I want to communicate. Now if I send him upstairs with his g/f of the week and give him all the privacy and trust in the world, what message does that send? You tell me. Do you think he's going to think "wow, Mom and Dad really trust me. I'd never let them down. They're right, I shouldn't have sex, I'm too young." I'd LOVE IT if that's what he thought. And in reality, I think he WOULD think that. Right up to the point where his girlfriend put her arm around his waist, or kissed him. His sixteen year old dick would stiffen in record speed and the best 16 yearold in the world would be hard-pressed to do what he considers "right."
It's about endorsing the behavior or not endorsing it. If he knocked the girl up what would I be able to say to him, to the girl, to the girls parents? Well, I trusted his hormone-enfused body so much that I didn't think there was any downside to them spending hours in his room with the door closed. I didn't think anything would happen. I trusted him. We have good communication."
No, what I'm saying is that children challenge a parent in ways that are unforseen and unexplainable. What I'm saying is that the act of being responsible for another persons life and existence from day 1 makes you grow, change, and mature. What I'm saying is that raising a child was a bigger learning experience in my life then 4 years of college and 3 years in the USMC combined.
What I'm saying is exactly what I said: Your perspective on things changes.
I encourage you to read the discussion about this as opposed to this singular post. While I appreciate your concern, it's wholly unfounded. Setting a curfew and expecting it to be followed is not overcontrolling. Letting my son have his girlfriend in his bedroom as long as they keep the door open is certainly not overcontrolling.
I don't need to explain my parenting philosophy to you, largely because it's already spelled out in this very thread. But suffice it to say that my views of teenage sexuality are particularly enlightened compared to many of my peers.
I'm proud of the work that it took for my son to reach the rank of Eagle scout. I was a US Marine, another orginzation that has problems with (openly) gay men. Does this make me a homophobe? Of course not. Is my boy a homophobe because he was involved in the BSA? Of course not.
I could not be more proud of the company my son is now part of. Do a google search for famous eagle scouts. Among the scores of recognizable names, you'll see Presidents, Astronauts, Generals, Colonels, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, US Senators, celebrities, businessmen, and clergy.
I wish you good luck if you ever do decide to raise children. It seems to me like you're going to need it.
You make a good point. Most accidents are not directly caused by speeding. However, the severity of the accident is almost entirely based on speed and the weight of your vehicle. If I make one of the mistakes you list going 55 the consequences will be far less then if I make the same mistake doing 80.
Give. It. Up. You do not know as much about raising children as a parent does, ESPECIALLY a parent that's been a parent for 16 years. I'm really, really sorry that feel that's unfair. It's just how it is. There is NOTHING, N-O-T-H-I-N-G to prepare a person for parenthood. It's a totally different beast then ANYTHING you've ever done or ever will do. Just accept that fact and move on.
Driving isn't much like parenthood, but it is similar in one important way: You can't get good at either of them without actual experience.
I'm finding it hard to believe you're even 22. You're acting more like 14. Call it what you want, but you've got a lot of growing up to do. I work with people your age who i respect and admire. I don't think anything of the fact that you're 22. I do think something of the fact that you're 22 trying to educate a 42 year old on life. How would you feel if a 12 year old tried to educate you on the ways of the world? Would you tell him he's got some growing up to do? I think you would. Now put yourself in my shoes.
If you were really as mature and grown up as you claim we'd never have had this conversation. The only "attack" I've made against you is labeling you as immature. You've made it glaringly obvious that I was correct in my assumption. It didn't begin that way, in the beginning the only assumption I made was that you didn't have kids. I didn't claim you were immature at first...no... you had to convince me of that.
"Knowledge and wisdom doesn't require first hand expirience"
This, my dear old friend, is where you're wrong. There are somethings that this applies to. I think you used AIDS as an example. You don't need to have AIDS to know that it's bad.
But parenting is not one of these things. You can't read a book on parenting and know how to be a good parent. Funny enough, it's like driving. What if I told you that I've never ACTUALLY driven, but I HAVE seen a lot of people do it. I happen to have coworkers at work who are good drives. I'm a passenger, I've been inside a car before. I've even read BOOKS about driving.
How safe would you feel getting in my car for a roadtrip?
I've taught my son humility. I've taught him that he isn't always right. I've taught him to respect his elders. I've taught him that he's going to be wrong more often then he's going to be right.
You're 22 fricken years old. You're SIX YEARS OLDER then the child we're discussing here. How do you think you're AT ALL qualified to raise a 16 year old when you're 22? Give me a break, man.
You don't think I'd like to be 22 again? Of course I would. And if we were debating the finer points of picking up women at a dance club or dorm-life in america today, you'd have the upper hand. But you're just not equipped for this debate. It's outside your area of expertise.
Really, let it go. You've posted 30 comments in this thread and I haven't seen a single one modded up. Do you think all the mod's are "ageists?" Perhaps they've just recognized your posts as trolling for an argument.
It doesn't seem to me like you're mature enough to even handle slashdot, let alone raising a teenager.
I don't think you understand just what we're talking about. A little mini-man who feels like he's all grown up, who feels like he's got the world by the balls. A boy old enough to look in the mirror and see the face of a man. It's not easy today to raise a child to be a good person. There are 100 different things trying to pull him from the path that his mother and I have set him on.
This has been a fun way to waste a morning. I'll talk about my kids any chance I get. What I won't do, however, is give unsolicited parenting advice. I suggest you do the same.
This was originally posted by an A.C. as a reply to one of your other posts, but I'm going to repost it here. I agree totally.
---
You're a moron. You think you're all grown up at 22? The biggest mistakes of your life still lie ahead of you.
What's arrogance is a 22 year old who thinks he's all grown up. What's arrogance is a 22 year old who thinks he knows better for someones child then the person who RAISED the child. What's arrogance is opening your mouth and offering opinions about things you've never experienced.
When you're a student, you see a lot of teachers. You can describe their job. You can explain their responsibilities. A student can emulate his teacher. A student can occassionally even teach his teacher. But that doesn't prepare a student to *be* a teacher. That isn't an insult to the student, it's just a fact of life.
Someday you'll be a teacher. That day is not today.
I didn't refute you "point by point" because you didn't make any valid points.
I'm sorry that you think it's arrogance. Personally, I think it's realism. Raising a child teaches you a lot about yourself, life in general, human nature, and making mistakes. You're kidding yourself if you don't think that these experiences changes your opinion on a lot of different things.
When you have a child, I hope your parenting philosophies (sp?) work for you. I've raised an honor-student eagle-scout varsity baseball player. He's got his faults, I've certainly made mistakes along the way, but I've proven my mettle.
Re-read the first line of my post. Your perspective on this changes as you raise a child. All this post has done is further cement the accuracy of that statement.
Of course there's no "magic switch." I didn't say there was. All I said was that there is a reason for the age of majority being set at 18. The way I see it, it's about averages.
Like everything else, maturity is a bell curve. Some kids are as mature as an average adult when they're 14. Some aren't that mature until they 24. But most will mature somewhere in the middle.
From the tone of your posts, I'm guessing you're 20-25 and don't have any children of your own. All I mean by this is that your perspective on these things changes as you raise a child.
It's about sending a message. Explaining through clearly defined rules that him having sex with his girlfriend is not responsible behavior at his age. And the bedroom door rule isn't just to prevent sex. It's also drinking, smoking cigarettes and smoking ANYTHING for that matter.
Yes, he is going to have sex if he wants to. He's human, he's a sexual being, and when you're a 16 y/o boy you're about as sexual as a being gets. He took his first playboy from my closet. I let him keep it. I took him to Walgreens when he was 15 and I made him buy a box of condoms.
What you seem to overlook is that it's about protecting his future. I don't want his dreams to be ruined because he gets his 16 year old girlfriend pregnent. And actions speak louder then words. If I say "Be responsible, don't have sex, but if you have sex, use protection" and then I let him take his gf upstairs and give them complete privacy, what message is that REALLY sending?
This is actually amusing. Your argument is that speed limits are "unsafely low." As evidence, you suggest that the person driving the speed limit is at a higher risk then those driving twenty miles over the limit. But, as you have kindly explained, it's unsafe to drive the speed limit ONLY because the drivers around you are SPEEDING.
That was some interesting logic you used, but I don't buy it. Yes, the guy doing 20 miles less then the traffic flow IS an obstacle. But it's not his fault. It's people like you, who feel you're entitled to drive 75 in a 55, who look at the guy driving 55 as the problem.
I have to agree that it sounds like you're just a little bitter over some speeding tickets. Yes, they're a revenue-generator. No, that is not a bad thing.
Let me ask you 2 things:
1) If they set the limit to 75, do you think people would stop speeding? I don't think they would. I think you'd have people doing 85-90. 2) Even if everyone did stop violating the limit, do you think the government will operate w/ less revenue? I think you'd see them make up for it elsewhere. Higher fees on licenses, license platers, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.
> You need to move to afghanistan or iraq or something where you don't have to > worry about 'The State' giving you speeding tickets for BREAKING THE LAW.
I ask my son to see his report card, I don't take his word for it. If he's supposed to be home at midnight, I stay up until he gets home, I don't take his word for it. I make him keep his bedroom door open when he has his girlfriend over to "do homework."
I trust my son. I let him borrow my car. I trust him to watch his sister. I trust him to stay at home overnight by himself on occassion.
But if you think a 16 year old won't lie through his teeth to get out of trouble, you're insane. There is no question about this.
Your comments suggest to me that you're either a child yourself, or you've never raised a child yourself. Nothing personal, but if you "trust" your teenager to act like a responsible adult, you're probably making a mistake. There's a reason that 18 is the age of majority, and not 15, 16, or even 17. If you quit parenting at 16 because you think you've done a good enough job so far, you're just begging for trouble.
I'm sorry, but there is just no way possible for you to make the statements you've made and call them "authoritative."
You're assuming that since you haven't found a pattern, and since nobody has suggested a successful pattern, that one does not exist.
Honestly, if you found a reproducible, reliable pattern in stock market data, would you give it away? How long would you take advantage of the situation before releasing your research in the name of science? Even if you're not a greedy person, who would give away the goose that lays the golden eggs? Perhaps more to the point, as you said yourself, who would *slaughter* the goose and then eat it for dinner? It's almost "Heisenbergian" that the usage of such research on a mass scale would change the dynamics of the market and render your pattern useless.
Your assertion carries about as much weight as saying "Aliens do not exist." Your evidence is that people have searched and nothing has been found.
I'm not suggesting that there are people who have identified or developed such an algorithm but I am suggesting that it is not beyond the realm of possibility. This is classic game theory. There are mountains of research available on how this might be possible, all that's left for a financial-programmer-genius is to apply the theory and fill in the gaps. A tall order, perhaps, but success would mean untold treasure. Just as people tromp all corners of the globe looking for buried treasures and lost cities, I'm sure many have devoted their talents and fortunes to this.
Please tell me that you don't think that we finance our defecit by actually printing more money? That is rediculous. We finance our defecit by selling T-Bills to foreign governments. This is a horrible thing, but nothing would be different if our money was still backed by gold.
It's AMAZING how ignorant people are to basic monetary theory. Something so central to the pursuits of our lives and people don't really understand how it works.
Money doesn't NEED to be tied to anything with intrinisic value. Money is abstract. It represents VALUE CREATED not ASSETS HELD. It's not a CHECK.
Call it what you want, but there's never been much dissention among the ranks of economists over the cessation of the gold standard. Why? Because it's a GOOD thing.
It's really simple.
The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Liquid capital is the oil in our machine. It's what makes everything run smoothly. It helps grow our economy when more of our money is used to conduct the worlds business. The fact that the worldwide oil business is done in US Dollars means that we save a bundle when our currency is trading lower then, say, the Euro.
Now, imagine if we were still tied to the gold standard. The only way to support this liquidity would be to purchase or find more gold. Unfortunately, that is not an easy thing to do. So what would have REALLY happened--and the reason the switch was made in1971--is that the amount of gold backing a single US dollar would drop each year. Which would make our currency LESS VALUABLE to foreign currencies, which would, wait for it, cause inflation. All foreign goods would cost more.
It was important to have gold backing our currency at a time in our history when our word wasn't as good as gold. But right now, the world over, you offer someone $1000 in gold or $1000 in US Dollars and you can expect someone to take the dollars. They're worth as much, they're just as stable, and they weigh a whole lot less.
The gold standard was an anachronism. It did nothing but limit our economy. Inflation wasn't invented in 1972, inflation was just as a big of problem before the conversion as it was after.
But you don't seem to have any notion of any of this. It seems like all you care is that your money was "backed" by something, as if that had any real effect on your life. I guess you think that when we were on the gold standard we stopped printing money when we reached a certain point. That's just not how it worked. What actually happened would be a manipulation of Gold prices by buying up surplusses and putting rumours out that we wanted to buy more. Then, as 1oz of gold doubled in price, we'd print twice as much money. It worked perfectly. Until the prices stabalized again and our gold dropped in value and we had "overextended currency." Do you know what happened then? Our currency was worth less, and, wait for it... inflation.
It also occured to me that if you're trying to villanize Nixon for growing the power of the executive, you better not stop there. Jefferson took office swearing to reduce the size of the federal government and the executive branch, and ended up expanding executive power more then any other president at that time. Not just the Lousiana Purchase, which was just as controversial at the time as anything that Bush has done. The Land Act of 1804 and The Lewis & Clark Expidition were both seen as outside the scope and power of the executive.
Slashdot Mirror
Me: Son, you're too young to have sex. You are not equipped to deal with the consequences. It would destroy your life. But, if you do decide to have sex, you should use protection. It will be your job to purchase such protection, because that is part of the responsibility of the act.
This is the message I want to communicate. Now if I send him upstairs with his g/f of the week and give him all the privacy and trust in the world, what message does that send? You tell me. Do you think he's going to think "wow, Mom and Dad really trust me. I'd never let them down. They're right, I shouldn't have sex, I'm too young." I'd LOVE IT if that's what he thought. And in reality, I think he WOULD think that. Right up to the point where his girlfriend put her arm around his waist, or kissed him. His sixteen year old dick would stiffen in record speed and the best 16 yearold in the world would be hard-pressed to do what he considers "right."
It's about endorsing the behavior or not endorsing it. If he knocked the girl up what would I be able to say to him, to the girl, to the girls parents? Well, I trusted his hormone-enfused body so much that I didn't think there was any downside to them spending hours in his room with the door closed. I didn't think anything would happen. I trusted him. We have good communication."
No, what I'm saying is that children challenge a parent in ways that are unforseen and unexplainable. What I'm saying is that the act of being responsible for another persons life and existence from day 1 makes you grow, change, and mature. What I'm saying is that raising a child was a bigger learning experience in my life then 4 years of college and 3 years in the USMC combined.
What I'm saying is exactly what I said: Your perspective on things changes.
I encourage you to read the discussion about this as opposed to this singular post. While I appreciate your concern, it's wholly unfounded. Setting a curfew and expecting it to be followed is not overcontrolling. Letting my son have his girlfriend in his bedroom as long as they keep the door open is certainly not overcontrolling.
I don't need to explain my parenting philosophy to you, largely because it's already spelled out in this very thread. But suffice it to say that my views of teenage sexuality are particularly enlightened compared to many of my peers.
There is no end to your ineptitude.
I'm proud of the work that it took for my son to reach the rank of Eagle scout. I was a US Marine, another orginzation that has problems with (openly) gay men. Does this make me a homophobe? Of course not. Is my boy a homophobe because he was involved in the BSA? Of course not.
I could not be more proud of the company my son is now part of. Do a google search for famous eagle scouts. Among the scores of recognizable names, you'll see Presidents, Astronauts, Generals, Colonels, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, US Senators, celebrities, businessmen, and clergy.
I wish you good luck if you ever do decide to raise children. It seems to me like you're going to need it.
You make a good point. Most accidents are not directly caused by speeding. However, the severity of the accident is almost entirely based on speed and the weight of your vehicle. If I make one of the mistakes you list going 55 the consequences will be far less then if I make the same mistake doing 80.
No, I didn't write that comment, I just reposted it.
Where did I learn to be a good parent?
...no... you had to convince me of that.
On the job training. There is no other way.
Give. It. Up. You do not know as much about raising children as a parent does, ESPECIALLY a parent that's been a parent for 16 years. I'm really, really sorry that feel that's unfair. It's just how it is. There is NOTHING, N-O-T-H-I-N-G to prepare a person for parenthood. It's a totally different beast then ANYTHING you've ever done or ever will do. Just accept that fact and move on.
Driving isn't much like parenthood, but it is similar in one important way: You can't get good at either of them without actual experience.
I'm finding it hard to believe you're even 22. You're acting more like 14. Call it what you want, but you've got a lot of growing up to do. I work with people your age who i respect and admire. I don't think anything of the fact that you're 22. I do think something of the fact that you're 22 trying to educate a 42 year old on life. How would you feel if a 12 year old tried to educate you on the ways of the world? Would you tell him he's got some growing up to do? I think you would. Now put yourself in my shoes.
If you were really as mature and grown up as you claim we'd never have had this conversation. The only "attack" I've made against you is labeling you as immature. You've made it glaringly obvious that I was correct in my assumption. It didn't begin that way, in the beginning the only assumption I made was that you didn't have kids. I didn't claim you were immature at first
"Knowledge and wisdom doesn't require first hand expirience"
This, my dear old friend, is where you're wrong. There are somethings that this applies to. I think you used AIDS as an example. You don't need to have AIDS to know that it's bad.
But parenting is not one of these things. You can't read a book on parenting and know how to be a good parent. Funny enough, it's like driving. What if I told you that I've never ACTUALLY driven, but I HAVE seen a lot of people do it. I happen to have coworkers at work who are good drives. I'm a passenger, I've been inside a car before. I've even read BOOKS about driving.
How safe would you feel getting in my car for a roadtrip?
That's what I thought.
I've taught my son humility. I've taught him that he isn't always right. I've taught him to respect his elders. I've taught him that he's going to be wrong more often then he's going to be right.
You're 22 fricken years old. You're SIX YEARS OLDER then the child we're discussing here. How do you think you're AT ALL qualified to raise a 16 year old when you're 22? Give me a break, man.
You don't think I'd like to be 22 again? Of course I would. And if we were debating the finer points of picking up women at a dance club or dorm-life in america today, you'd have the upper hand. But you're just not equipped for this debate. It's outside your area of expertise.
Really, let it go. You've posted 30 comments in this thread and I haven't seen a single one modded up. Do you think all the mod's are "ageists?" Perhaps they've just recognized your posts as trolling for an argument.
It doesn't seem to me like you're mature enough to even handle slashdot, let alone raising a teenager.
I don't think you understand just what we're talking about. A little mini-man who feels like he's all grown up, who feels like he's got the world by the balls. A boy old enough to look in the mirror and see the face of a man. It's not easy today to raise a child to be a good person. There are 100 different things trying to pull him from the path that his mother and I have set him on.
This has been a fun way to waste a morning. I'll talk about my kids any chance I get. What I won't do, however, is give unsolicited parenting advice. I suggest you do the same.
This was originally posted by an A.C. as a reply to one of your other posts, but I'm going to repost it here. I agree totally.
---
You're a moron. You think you're all grown up at 22? The biggest mistakes of your life still lie ahead of you.
What's arrogance is a 22 year old who thinks he's all grown up. What's arrogance is a 22 year old who thinks he knows better for someones child then the person who RAISED the child. What's arrogance is opening your mouth and offering opinions about things you've never experienced.
When you're a student, you see a lot of teachers. You can describe their job. You can explain their responsibilities. A student can emulate his teacher. A student can occassionally even teach his teacher. But that doesn't prepare a student to *be* a teacher. That isn't an insult to the student, it's just a fact of life.
Someday you'll be a teacher. That day is not today.
---
Wait for your day, son.
I didn't refute you "point by point" because you didn't make any valid points.
I'm sorry that you think it's arrogance. Personally, I think it's realism. Raising a child teaches you a lot about yourself, life in general, human nature, and making mistakes. You're kidding yourself if you don't think that these experiences changes your opinion on a lot of different things.
When you have a child, I hope your parenting philosophies (sp?) work for you. I've raised an honor-student eagle-scout varsity baseball player. He's got his faults, I've certainly made mistakes along the way, but I've proven my mettle.
Re-read the first line of my post. Your perspective on this changes as you raise a child. All this post has done is further cement the accuracy of that statement.
Give it up.
Of course there's no "magic switch." I didn't say there was. All I said was that there is a reason for the age of majority being set at 18. The way I see it, it's about averages.
Like everything else, maturity is a bell curve. Some kids are as mature as an average adult when they're 14. Some aren't that mature until they 24. But most will mature somewhere in the middle.
"Troll" ... Hilarious! Don't worry, you'll be meta-moderated unfair.
From the tone of your posts, I'm guessing you're 20-25 and don't have any children of your own. All I mean by this is that your perspective on these things changes as you raise a child.
It's about sending a message. Explaining through clearly defined rules that him having sex with his girlfriend is not responsible behavior at his age. And the bedroom door rule isn't just to prevent sex. It's also drinking, smoking cigarettes and smoking ANYTHING for that matter.
Yes, he is going to have sex if he wants to. He's human, he's a sexual being, and when you're a 16 y/o boy you're about as sexual as a being gets. He took his first playboy from my closet. I let him keep it. I took him to Walgreens when he was 15 and I made him buy a box of condoms.
What you seem to overlook is that it's about protecting his future. I don't want his dreams to be ruined because he gets his 16 year old girlfriend pregnent. And actions speak louder then words. If I say "Be responsible, don't have sex, but if you have sex, use protection" and then I let him take his gf upstairs and give them complete privacy, what message is that REALLY sending?
This is actually amusing. Your argument is that speed limits are "unsafely low." As evidence, you suggest that the person driving the speed limit is at a higher risk then those driving twenty miles over the limit. But, as you have kindly explained, it's unsafe to drive the speed limit ONLY because the drivers around you are SPEEDING.
That was some interesting logic you used, but I don't buy it. Yes, the guy doing 20 miles less then the traffic flow IS an obstacle. But it's not his fault. It's people like you, who feel you're entitled to drive 75 in a 55, who look at the guy driving 55 as the problem.
I have to agree that it sounds like you're just a little bitter over some speeding tickets. Yes, they're a revenue-generator. No, that is not a bad thing.
Let me ask you 2 things:
1) If they set the limit to 75, do you think people would stop speeding? I don't think they would. I think you'd have people doing 85-90.
2) Even if everyone did stop violating the limit, do you think the government will operate w/ less revenue? I think you'd see them make up for it elsewhere. Higher fees on licenses, license platers, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.
But what do you think?
> You need to move to afghanistan or iraq or something where you don't have to
> worry about 'The State' giving you speeding tickets for BREAKING THE LAW.
Or Montana.
I ask my son to see his report card, I don't take his word for it. If he's supposed to be home at midnight, I stay up until he gets home, I don't take his word for it. I make him keep his bedroom door open when he has his girlfriend over to "do homework."
I trust my son. I let him borrow my car. I trust him to watch his sister. I trust him to stay at home overnight by himself on occassion.
But if you think a 16 year old won't lie through his teeth to get out of trouble, you're insane. There is no question about this.
Your comments suggest to me that you're either a child yourself, or you've never raised a child yourself. Nothing personal, but if you "trust" your teenager to act like a responsible adult, you're probably making a mistake. There's a reason that 18 is the age of majority, and not 15, 16, or even 17. If you quit parenting at 16 because you think you've done a good enough job so far, you're just begging for trouble.
I'm sorry, but there is just no way possible for you to make the statements you've made and call them "authoritative."
You're assuming that since you haven't found a pattern, and since nobody has suggested a successful pattern, that one does not exist.
Honestly, if you found a reproducible, reliable pattern in stock market data, would you give it away? How long would you take advantage of the situation before releasing your research in the name of science? Even if you're not a greedy person, who would give away the goose that lays the golden eggs? Perhaps more to the point, as you said yourself, who would *slaughter* the goose and then eat it for dinner? It's almost "Heisenbergian" that the usage of such research on a mass scale would change the dynamics of the market and render your pattern useless.
Your assertion carries about as much weight as saying "Aliens do not exist." Your evidence is that people have searched and nothing has been found.
I'm not suggesting that there are people who have identified or developed such an algorithm but I am suggesting that it is not beyond the realm of possibility. This is classic game theory. There are mountains of research available on how this might be possible, all that's left for a financial-programmer-genius is to apply the theory and fill in the gaps. A tall order, perhaps, but success would mean untold treasure. Just as people tromp all corners of the globe looking for buried treasures and lost cities, I'm sure many have devoted their talents and fortunes to this.
While that was an interesting read, you seem to overlook that I was writing specifically about the financing the American defecit.
Please tell me that you don't think that we finance our defecit by actually printing more money? That is rediculous. We finance our defecit by selling T-Bills to foreign governments. This is a horrible thing, but nothing would be different if our money was still backed by gold.
It's AMAZING how ignorant people are to basic monetary theory. Something so central to the pursuits of our lives and people don't really understand how it works.
I think it's clear to EVERYONE why this was posted AC.
Money doesn't NEED to be tied to anything with intrinisic value. Money is abstract. It represents VALUE CREATED not ASSETS HELD. It's not a CHECK.
Call it what you want, but there's never been much dissention among the ranks of economists over the cessation of the gold standard. Why? Because it's a GOOD thing.
It's really simple.
The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Liquid capital is the oil in our machine. It's what makes everything run smoothly. It helps grow our economy when more of our money is used to conduct the worlds business. The fact that the worldwide oil business is done in US Dollars means that we save a bundle when our currency is trading lower then, say, the Euro.
Now, imagine if we were still tied to the gold standard. The only way to support this liquidity would be to purchase or find more gold. Unfortunately, that is not an easy thing to do. So what would have REALLY happened--and the reason the switch was made in1971--is that the amount of gold backing a single US dollar would drop each year. Which would make our currency LESS VALUABLE to foreign currencies, which would, wait for it, cause inflation. All foreign goods would cost more.
It was important to have gold backing our currency at a time in our history when our word wasn't as good as gold. But right now, the world over, you offer someone $1000 in gold or $1000 in US Dollars and you can expect someone to take the dollars. They're worth as much, they're just as stable, and they weigh a whole lot less.
The gold standard was an anachronism. It did nothing but limit our economy. Inflation wasn't invented in 1972, inflation was just as a big of problem before the conversion as it was after.
But you don't seem to have any notion of any of this. It seems like all you care is that your money was "backed" by something, as if that had any real effect on your life. I guess you think that when we were on the gold standard we stopped printing money when we reached a certain point. That's just not how it worked. What actually happened would be a manipulation of Gold prices by buying up surplusses and putting rumours out that we wanted to buy more. Then, as 1oz of gold doubled in price, we'd print twice as much money. It worked perfectly. Until the prices stabalized again and our gold dropped in value and we had "overextended currency." Do you know what happened then? Our currency was worth less, and, wait for it... inflation.
I'll bite: What in the hell does this have to do with eliminating the gold standard? Interesting tin-foil hattery but not much more.
It also occured to me that if you're trying to villanize Nixon for growing the power of the executive, you better not stop there. Jefferson took office swearing to reduce the size of the federal government and the executive branch, and ended up expanding executive power more then any other president at that time. Not just the Lousiana Purchase, which was just as controversial at the time as anything that Bush has done. The Land Act of 1804 and The Lewis & Clark Expidition were both seen as outside the scope and power of the executive.