By Emily Ekins, Reason.com, June 29th, 2016 (H/T to Cody Quirk for sharing):
Fifteen percent is the magic number Libertarian presidential candidate and former governor Gary Johnson needs to reach to earn his voice in the 2016 election.
By capturing the support of 15 percent of voters in national public opinion polls, Johnson could join the major party’s presidential candidates on the primetime debate stage. With both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates disliked at historic levels and arising share of political independents frustrated with the two major parties, this is the year a third-party candidate like Johnson has a realistic chance of getting onto the debate stage.
What would it take?
Johnson would need to receive an invitation to participate in the debates from the Commission on Presidential debates (CPD), a private, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) organization that has sponsored the general election presidential debates since 1988. The CPD is not a government entity, nor does it receive government funding. But it is a creation of the two major parties, co-chaired at its inception by both the Republican and Democratic parties’ national chairman.
Read the rest of the article here.
(Via American Third Party Report)
You do realize that prices simply adjust to demand, right? “Not enough” is nonsense, as I have pointed out. You have utterly failed at debunking anything in the course of this thread.
Briton hasn’t exited the EU yet. Its effect has yet to be determined.
Rothbard’s use of Gold is a non-starter in modern economy. For example, for the US to cover its trade deficit of about $400 billion you need around 12 tons of gold to ship out of the US every year. The world only produces about 4 tons per year. The US gold reserve is only about 8 tons. We couldn’t even make it 1 year.
*who cares?
Both links were far more extensive than what you give indication of reading. Rothbard walks step by step how to liquidate the Fed and moved to a gold-backed dollar (at least as a short term fix) with his more long term preferences made clear. I view that and/or free banking (even mutual banking) as steps to a free society. But at the end of the day, you are obviously more concerned with a temporary market reaction.
As Peter Schiff put it, healthy markets don’t topple at every minor event like our current system. The fact that they do just shows what a house of cards the whole thing is. The self-fulfilling prophecy that “Brexit will be bad for the markets” was pretty much debunked this week as the markets went back up.
Ultimately, the markets are like a scared chihuahua that barks randomly and moments later forgot what it was barking about. I’m sure ending slavery and other events created “uncertainty” in the markets as well. Who well?
Look at how the markets reacted to the UK vote to leave the EU. Not actually leave it but just decide to leave it. The US changing its monetary system over night, would cause economic effects around the world.
I read both links, the first was an argument about why the Fed is bad and basically ends with get rid of the fed and replace it with nothing. I propose that would be an economic disaster and any political party that did just that would be forever hated. The second proposal (from wikipedia) has been tried and basically relies upon using Gold to handle international trade. In the US there were also large number of failures of the Free Banks, which doesn’t meet the test for stability. Further, it was a Wikipedia source which doesn’t meet any academic. Wikipedia, is not a reviewed source and just about anybody can write anything into it.
Get rid of the fed without another way of regulating the supply of money and you get rid of the economy at the same time.
T Rex,
I see you are back to the ad hominems. Is that only way for you to have a discussion? Rather then put forth a proposition you rely upon insults?
You asked a lot of what if we get rid of something? every one of those had nothing to do with how the supply of money is regulated.
AJ: Abolish slavery and replace it with what? Who will pick the cotton if not for slaves? How will the economy survive?
me: Umm, labor.
The point of politics is to rally significant subsets or even majorities to adopt a direction. Slavery is a really bad example, since it was abolished only after much carnage. Wouldn’t it be preferable to suggest a general path and specific steps, rather than mount the soapbox for decades with very few takers.
If we get rid of STDs, what will we replace it with?
If we get rid of debt, what will we replace it with?
If we get rid of depression, what will we replace it with?
If we git rid of Star Wars: Episode 1 what will we replace it with?
If we get rid of consensual sex, what will we replace it with?
If we get rid of hemorrhoids, what will we replace them with?
steve,
I have given you multiple examples of what to “replace” it with. I strongly suspect that you were too intellectually lazy to read either link.
*banksters
“Abolish slavery and replace it with what? Who will pick the cotton if not for slaves? How will the economy survive?”
Exactly.
If I get rid of my tumor, what will I replace it with?
If I get rid of my headache, what will I replace it with?
Who knows and who cares?
It’s up to the statists to “prove” we need banisters deciding these things.
Milton Friedman had a proposal to switch from using short term interest rates to control the rate of growth of the money supply to using a fixed rate for controlling the supply. I am presuming that to get the money into “circulation” that you would have banks bid on how much interest they would pay to get use of the new money.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscript.html
Andy,
The question is how to progress from where we are to something different. Just yelling to get rid of the Fed is an incomplete and frankly childish proposal.
Funny how people got by without central banking and government mandated fiat currency.
Read G. Edward Griffin’s excellent book, “The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At The Federal Reserve System.”
Andy,
You don’t seem to have a clue as too what you propose to do.
Slavery and the Federal Reserve Banking system are not equivalents. When we got rid of slavery in the US we replaced it with share cropping and debt slavery. It took generations and technological innovation to get rid of share cropping.
To go back to the gold standard you have to get all our trading partners to agree to swap gold with us to offset any trade imbalances. So you say get rid of something. Sure replace it with what other system? and how and how not to fuck up the economy, how not to have massive layoffs of workers, people losing their jobs and creating an environment for a fascist to come to power.
Abolish slavery and replace it with what? Who will pick the cotton if not for slaves? How will the economy survive?
Andy, abolish and replace it with what? what monetary system do you replace it with and how do you avoid causing a major depression during the process?
@ steve m
“Castle isn’t even in the running because if for no other reason he won’t be on the ballot in enough states. Then he has to come up from less then 0.25% to 15% in the polls.”
Is it true he WON’T be on the ballot in enough states? I know he’s not CURRENTLY, but a number of the states are still in progress and in some states you can’t actually be officially on the ballot until the deadline comes and you submit your signatures. For example, while the Libertarian Party looks like it will be on the ballot in all states, it is CURRENTLY only on it in 33.
That said, the 0.25% to 15% is a bit of a jump. It’d be a lot nicer if it was a lower percentage, but the Commission on Presidential Debates (controlled by the Republicans and Democrats) upped it to 15% due to Ross Perot.
“T Rex
July 1, 2016 at 02:44
The amount of money in any economy determines how rich the country is. Obvious. Nobody ever has to do any work. Just sit around and print more money when necessary”
There is nothing libertarian or necessary about the Federal Reserve System. Abolish it, and put the people who run it in prison.
The amount of money in any economy determines how rich the country is. Obvious. Nobody ever has to do any work. Just sit around and print more money when necessary
Publik skool said so. Duh.
The 1% said so.
If prices don’t double (preferably triple or quadruple) every day, the economy will collapse.
yep but done just like a snap of your fingers and so is the US economy is also toast.
So the point is to make such a transition as painless to the economy as possible.
Next, take away the Fed’s ability to control the price or quantity of money, and it’s toast! :cheers:
Repeal legal tender laws and the Fed likely goes out of business.
T Rex,
I think I am going to suggest leaving the Fed as it is but with regular auditing and allow competing crypto currencies when one of these proves its long term price stability then people and commerce will move to it obsoleting the dollar.
Gary Johnson is not a good debater, alright. But the idea that any CP candidate is going to be taken seriously is laughable. I mean, I would welcome Castle. Perhaps that would allow the LP to be more bold/principled and not look like the biggest nuts on stage. Ron Paul talked about legalized heroin. Good for him. He also has close friends and associates who’ve written under his name and support things like stoning children who talk back to their parents. That might not sound that bad to people here supporting theocractic nuts, but it’s not something you want to tell 100 million voters in 2016. I’d rather not have to deal with explaining why libertarians support stoning unruly children, white-only communities, police beating black people to keep them in line, etc. Even the economic arguments that are totally legit are just so esoteric that they don’t matter at all to voters. The average voter is incapable of graduating from a dumbed down 4 year college. You can’t expect them to have PhDs in… everything. And they’ve already decided they aren’t anarchists. I’m not saying to dumb it down, either. Just don’t focus on things that only appeal to a small % of people with Aspbergers.
We had bank runs during the gold standard days. Take a look at the Panic of 1873 for example.
steve,
That’s a long and complicated question that can’t be answered in soundbite form, so I’ll give you a couple links for you to peruse at your convenience:
https://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0/html/c/311
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking
Bank runs are, of course, a byproduct of factional reserve banking (which the Fed exists to prop up), but that’s yet another long discussion.
On price controls I am in agreement. On use of gold as a basis for an economy it has proven to be very flawed. So if not gold. If not the Fed. Then what?
The legitimate comparison is between the Great Recession and what would have happened without Fed intervention, the world we do not see, that being a recycle of the Great Depression, which was much worse.
Well, now we’re getting into a million other topics. (The Fed did a marvelous job preventing the Great Recession…oh wait..it didn’t.) There’s not enough room here to cover deflation, the 19th century, free banking, home prices, precious metals, monetary economics, ad nauseam.
I’ll just say that you either support price controls or you don’t. I am in the latter camp.
We have had a recent example of what happens if home prices uniformly fall. The name is “The Great Recession”, or, if you prefer, “The Third Depression”, after the Long Depression and the Great Depression.
If you think deflation will continue will you buy a house? If you are a builder and you are buying material today for a house you will sell 6 months from now will you build the house? Deflation encourages people not to spend. Fewer things get made, fewer people employed.
There is a technical name for putting money into precious metals, based on what the you think the price of precious metals will do.
The word is “speculation”, not “investing”.
If I already own the house it’s bad for me.
If I’m looking to buy a house it’s good for me.
Either way, the government has no role to play in price-fixing, regardless of whether it is good or bad in my particular situation.
You are only looking at one side of the chart you miss the dramatic rising of prices as well. And I do think that rapidly changing values is bad in that you don’t know if you should buy or sell today or next week. Gradual fluctuations are ok. Rapid fluctuations are bad ether prices rising or falling. That is the primary problem with gold as a basis for currency.
Do you think that if the value of your home decreases that is good or bad?
http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-394-there-is-nothing-to-fear-about-deflation/
If you think falling prices (aka a rising standard of living for the same amount of money) are inherently bad, then I really don’t have a response. You are correct that the Fed will definitely stop that from happening.
So…to each his own!
Over the 18 year time that chart shows. The price of milk in Gold fluctuated by over 500%. This instability or rapid changes in value of the gold makes it very hard for businesses to take on long term contracts. How can I quote you a price for something that takes a year to build if the currency that you are going to pay me changes that rapidly? Going to gold would be a disaster for the economy.
Your point on where currency comes from is far too simplistic.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html
I’ll just quote one of the comments from your milk article:
“What’s wrong with falling prices over time? The same amount of money is getting a person a better standard of living. And lest you think a slow decline in prices is bad for companies, let’s not forget that their input prices would be slowly falling as well. Declining prices haven’t killed the computer industry, right?
Mises and Rothbard explained very well that the size of the money supply doesn’t matter. You don’t need a constantly expanding money supply to have a strong economy at all. The fact that the gold supply is limited is one of the reasons it’s great to use for money.”
Falling prices is the ENTIRE POINT of getting rid of the Fed. So…great article!
You do realize the question has nothing to do with the Fed, right? It’s the US Treasury that prints the currency, not the Fed. The Fed centrally plans interest rates and reserve requirements (with disastrous consequences). It has only been around for about 100 years.
Do you think interest rates and reserve requirements should be centrally dictated? If the answer is “no,” then we’re in agreement. I could care less what is used as money. It’s irrelevant to the case against the Fed.
Here is an example of why use dollars as produced by the fed to using gold.
“The price of milk is way more stable over the last 18 years when priced in dollars. In gold, we’d have gone from major inflation in the 90s, to deflation throughout the 2000s.
So gold doesn’t work for global purposes, and it doesn’t even make the economy more stable.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worst-idea-in-the-world-in-one-chart-2012-9
T Rex,
I am asking where is the supply of currency is going to come from? A supply that grows as the economy grows? That is one thing the Fed does right now. Not everything but one thing.
Try to ease off the ad hominems they don’t really help the conversation.
Oh, the glories of government price controls. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2016/06/23/venezuelas-socialist-disaster/86261576/
“Russia and the US sit on large quantities of gold and could manipulate its value anytime they want.”
Well….yeah. That kind of makes the point against a Central Commissar running money, doesn’t it?
“I am waiting for a proposal from you for replacing the Fed and so far I haven’t heard one.”
You are asking what should be used as money? Or what should replace the Fed? Do you even know the difference between the two questions? I’m not convinced that you do.
Let’s make it simple: do you feel the government should set price controls on money? Yes or no? If the answer is “no,” then there is no reason to continue because we are in agreement.
I haven’t argued for keeping the Fed. I am pointing out that we humans use things like gold, dollars, bit coin and shells because we agree they have some constant value. When they lose our trust we stop using them. There are very good reasons not to use a commodity such as gold or sugar as the basis of a currency. Russia and the US sit on large quantities of gold and could manipulate its value anytime they want. Not that much different the the Fed manipulating the value of the dollar.
I am waiting for a proposal from you for replacing the Fed and so far I haven’t heard one.
It seems that you do not understand the difference between currency and the Fed…the former predates the latter by quite a bit.
“They work as long as people agree that they have value. Before gold we used to use shells that were good for dying cloth purple.”
Do you realize your statement is completely meaningless? All you said is “money is money.” You haven’t made any real point on why the Fed should exist and centrally plan interest rates, engage in open market operations, set reserve ratios, etc.
Gold has been used for far more than money (jewelry, industrial uses, dental uses, etc) and is a decent candidate for replacing (or simply backing) money. But although it has many positive qualities, that’s really not the point.
Why do you feel a Central Commissar should set the price/amount/use of money, any more than it should toilet seats, lawn mowers, TV sets, etc?
Look, we all know Gov. Johnson is not the greatest public speaker. But I didn’t feel he was TERRIBLE during the CNN event. He at least tried to answer questions with some sort of substance. Trump, on the other hand says a lot of nothing. About the recent attack in Turkey, Trump said “something very bad is happening – very bad.” And that wasn’t even a tweet. That was to a live crowd of cult followers.
I thought Johnson was actually not bad during the LP convention debate. If he keeps his answers short and concise, he can be OK. If he does make a debate, I think Trump would ignore him and attack Mrs. Clinton.
What frustrates me is when I see poll numbers that have only Trump and Clinton and then they say “but when other candidates are included . . . ” Other candidates should be included in EVERY poll. Fox, MSNBC and CNN has no problem listing all 17 republicans in their poll results, even when George Pataki was receiving .05%.
They should poll every candidate on enough ballots to win. Does Castle even come close to that?
And you understand the worth of gold? all monetary systems are delusional. They work as long as people agree that they have value. Before gold we used to use shells that were good for dying cloth purple.
I am a business owner get all the good random calls to invest in every thing from oil drilling to movies and tons of free good advice on hot stock tips… the one that always cracks me up is the sales man that want to trade their pretty and stable gold for my worthless dollars.
Too funny
“Even my rich gold mining friends don’t want it to be gold.”
It doesn’t matter what they ‘want’ it to be, with all due respect. Gold and other precious metals are the most likely replacements.
As Rothbard points out in “the Case Against the Fed,” there is no such thing as a “perfect supply of money.” Whatever is out there, the price will simply adjust according to the demand. If there is not “enough” (a completely arbitrary standard btw) gold, it doesn’t matter. It’s infinitely divisible. A warehouse can produce receipts that represent any amount of it.
It makes no sense that people are forced into stock/bonds/options/fund markets they don’t understand, just to save for retirement. It’s completely absurd. Every extra dollar the Fed and/or fractional reserve banks invent simply devalues everyone else’s money. Creating money out of thin air and creating debt makes no economic sense.
Old people are mocked for saying “in my day it cost just a nickel for [fill in the blank”. They’re correct, though.
GJ haters gotta’ hate.
T Rex,
You can’t just get rid of the prevailing monetary system and not replace it with something else. So if we get rid of the fed what are you proposing to replace it with? Even my rich gold mining friends don’t want it to be gold.
Darcy,
Smart managers also know when they lost a game. You lost the Libertarian Game in Orlando, why are you still trying to play it. Move on to where you can win or at least have a chance.
I work in the financial industry (I won’t give my job title, but it involves passing extensive government testing 😉 and abolishing the Fed is my #1 issue. Johnson simply has no understanding of the topic…if he did, he would make eradicating the Fed (a group of bankster parasites that perpetually rips off low-income people, fixed-income people, non-hedge fund managers, etc) his #1 issue.
I strongly suspect that he has no clue what the Fed actually does or has accepted mainstream tautological orthodoxy that “the Fed is good because the Fed is good.” That’s why he’s weak or scared when asked if he would abolish the Fed. Darrell Castle, on the other hand, has made abolishing the Fed the centerpiece of his platform.
This is a pivotal issue. The rest of libertarianism, IMO, doesn’t work without it. The Fed makes it impossible for people to save for retirement, health care, education, etc. Everyone here should read Rothbard’s “the Case Against the Fed” https://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0/html
If you want something a bit more advanced, read Rothbard’s ‘The Mystery of Banking.”
If you are capable of understanding these texts, abolishing the Fed is THE issue. Period.
Just my two opinionated cents. 😀
“There ain’t no pinch hitting in the Presidential debates. Smart managers know the rules of their game.” — steve m
That’s true, but my pinch-hitting analogy was a reference to the Libertarian convention in Orlando when the party’s delegates could have selected someone other than the party’s presumptive nominee.
Too make the debates each candidate has to be polling at least 15%. So for three third party candidates to make it they would need 45% between them and the 2 major candidates would have about 27.5% assuming zero undecided. There is a fighting chance that Johnson will reach 15% (he is nearing that number now in some states). Stein has a long ways to go She is below 4%. Castle isn’t even in the running because if for no other reason he won’t be on the ballot in enough states. Then he has to come up from less then 0.25% to 15% in the polls.
I hope Gary makes the major debates and respects the other 3rd parties by participating in minor debates.
Darcy,
There ain’t no pinch hitting in the Presidential debates. Smart managers know the rules of their game.
“It is much better to step to the plate, face off against a major league pitcher and be struck out then to hide in dugout.” — steve m
I agree, Steve, but there are also times when a manager — a smart manager — knows when to send in a pinch-hitter, especially when the batter is only capable of hitting a foul ball or two before whiffing at a fastball three feet off the plate.
I hope he, Stein, and Castle make it, and the spoilers Clinton and Trump lose all support and get kicked out of the debates.
Darcy,
It is much better to step to the plate, face off against a major league pitcher and be struck out then to hide in dugout.
“I hope you get your chance to be proven correct and that Governor Johnson makes the debates.” — steve m
Be careful what you wish for.
For what it’s worth, during an on-air interview on KXYL in Brownwood, Texas, yesterday, a radio talk show host told me that he thought Gary Johnson was completely out of his league. I believe he used the word “flaky.” He said that he was somewhat reassured — but not entirely — to see that the former New Mexico governor was at least accompanied by a grown-up in last week’s CNN Town Hall.
I responded by saying that William Weld was there to bail Johnson out when he was stumped by a question, which happens more often than one can imagine.
Earth to LP: Johnson is ill-prepared for the presidency — and the country is beginning to see it.
Darcy,
I hope you get your chance to be proven correct and that Governor Johnson makes the debates.
I totally agree with T Rex. Gary Johnson would be a disaster in a nationally-televised debate with Hillary and The Donald — an embarrassment, to put it mildly — but someone like Darrell Castle would be perfectly capable of holding his own in such a setting while having something bold and original to say on a myriad of issues, including Wall Street’s control over the nation’s monetary system through the Federal Reserve.
At the very least, the Constitution Party nominee wouldn’t have that doltish deer-in-the-headlights look that Johnson can’t seem to avoid in interview after interview…
Castle who? in the mean time polling data coming out shows in the battleground states Johnson is nearing the 15% mark.
I wish Castle could get in the debates so he could attack the Federal Reserve (you know, take a bold, actual position on something—something Johnson is incapable of.)
On Free Talk Live recently, they talked about how Ron Paul stood up in front of a Republican audience and advocated the legalization of heroin. The response? (Some) applause! Gary would never, ever do that.
Let’s hope not. Johnson in the debates would be a *disaster.* Can you imagine him stammering and mumbling while Trump lands punch after punch?
The Town Hall was a bunch of easy questions with no opponents and they were still horrible.