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Nov. 23, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
16:05
Gold Standard, Immigration, Austrian vs Chicago School - #AskRonPaul

Dr. Paul again takes questions from our viewing audience, including one on how the country might be different had the US never gone off the gold standard. Some good lessons and interesting commentary. Watch the Liberty Report LIVE Every weekday at 12pm EST on Rumble! https://rumble.com/RonPaulLibertyReport Join us on Locals: https://ronpaul.locals.com

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Immigration and Empire Building 00:11:45
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning.
How are you, Dr. Paul?
I'm doing fine.
Great, great.
Everything going well?
Trying to improve everything, too.
Every day, every day.
We've got a different kind of show today.
We're going back to an old favorite.
It is Thanksgiving weekend, and so we're doing an Ask Ron Paul.
We should do that a lot more often.
We haven't in a while.
But I can say, and I'm very happy to say that I put it out as a tweet last night on your Twitter.
And the fact of the matter is we have more questions than ever.
So it was a huge response.
Difficult to wane this, to put this thing down to just the three questions, which is all our time allows.
But there were so many great questions, and we appreciate them.
But why don't we dig right into it?
Are you ready?
No, Ribby, you better be careful because I might turn this around someday and we're going to ask Daniel a question.
Nobody wants to hear a question.
Oh, I don't know.
We'll do that someday.
Well, let's get into it.
You're in the hot seat today, and I get the easy job.
But let's put up that first question.
How would our history be different if the U.S. never went off the gold standard in 1972?
And this is Cirrus asking the question.
How would it be different if we never went off of it?
You know, it depends on a lot of factors.
If you had stayed on the gold standard but tried to have an empire and a welfare state, it would just be a mass chaos because all you do is run up the debt.
But the process would end more quickly because you just wouldn't be able to monetize the debt rapidly.
So I see the gold standard as a restraint on that type of spending.
But if you don't have that, then you get what we have right now.
You know, that's 1971, and it's caused chaos ever since.
It's amazing it's lasted this long.
But if you had stayed on, it wouldn't be the answer because the gold standard is part of a philosophy, and that is the philosophy of liberty.
And matter of fact, the staying on the standard implies that it is a gold standard.
It is government-run.
And that's not exactly what we have to have.
What we want is getting rid of a system which is a Federal Reserve monetizing debt and giving it its official thing and making sure that they have a monopoly control.
So if you do something else and still have monopoly control, you're still going to have these problems.
But if we had had and continued even in a better fashion than we did, even in the early years, there was always some type of abuse.
But certainly up until 1971, there was a connection between the dollar and gold, which was a restraint.
And unfortunately, if you had that, if you didn't have that, you have more wars.
And what has happened since 1971?
The wars continue to continue.
So gold is part of a major philosophy of free markets.
But you can't have gold correcting all the mistakes of a regulated market.
So if you have this and you let the politicians and the special interests run up these debts for welfare at home and welfare around the world and war going on, it would be chaotic.
Maybe one advantage would be that it would collapse a little sooner, but there's always temptation to benefit by the special interest and that's the reason they do it.
I think they do it slowly because they know the system won't work forever but they know that if they go more slowly people can accumulate a whole lot of wealth.
It reminds me of the statement I've mentioned many times.
Several of the Federal Reserve Board chairmen always would remind me that when I would ask them questions sort of like this, what are you going to do to keep this crashing down and all this, and how are you going to control the inflation?
They say, well, we don't have to worry too much about that as long as the adaptation is orderly.
So if you have prices going up at one or two percent, the Fed decided two percent, two percent destruction of our money, that's orderly.
We'll keep doing that and see how long we can go and take care of our friends.
But the thing of it is the temptation and human nature is such that if you don't have government there for the purpose of protecting liberty, but rather than to pretend they can manage the economy, the domestic affairs and wars, education, the whole thing, even the gold standard isn't going to stop them because their main goal is government intervention.
And the purpose is to make government bigger.
And of course, anybody who's believed in restraining government endorse a gold standard.
You know, the Benzentine Empire, I always thought it was pretty neat.
That was the eastern half of the Roman Empire.
And they had a bazant, and it was not run like a world dictatorship, but it became a world currency all through the Caribbean, Africa, and all.
And it lasted a thousand years.
But what ended it was they started spending money and they extended their powers a little bit too far.
And then there was an economic crash, a change where the empire, their empire, the Byzantine Empire, then ended.
Well, let's move on to another topic.
These are good questions again.
This next one is from Biddy.
And Biddy asks, what do you say to those who maintain that mass illegal immigration boosts our economy?
I would say, it's crazy.
Well, but I qualify.
The qualification is, what is immigration?
I remember as a libertarian, I was running, and I was probably still sorting out the immigration problem, and I was for immigration, and I am for immigration, and a lot of people say it now, you know, legal immigration, that is good.
It can be mass, and that would be okay and probably good for the economy.
But there were a few libertarians that challenged me about this, and I said, well, I'm for that and open.
I said, but the danger to me would be when does the immigration become an invasion?
And I didn't know exactly what year it was going to occur, but it did occur.
You know, it's an invasion now.
And I see the government under these circumstances should be the protector of property.
That's one function the government should be able to do, that people just don't steal property when they want it.
There has to be a law and order, and ownership of property is important, and the government shouldn't be doing anything that you or I couldn't do, and that is take people's property.
So that, if you argue whether it's good or bad, I think it depends.
When it gets closer and closer to an invasion where we are, I would think that the obligations and the social problems that we have were way past the benefits.
Yet I've heard some who are very favorable, very much in favor of the current policy, arguing in the case that we're worrying about the shrinkage of the population, but they don't talk about, they don't talk a thing about like abortion.
So they talk about this and they say, we could do the immigration.
And the numbers weren't anything like this.
But when my grandparents came over from Germany, there were lots, you know, and they came through in an orderly fashion.
It was much more orderly.
They had some concerns about diseases and sometimes they had at least a short-term quarantine and they knew who was coming in.
But to just say immigration is good for the economy.
That reminds me of a saying which is wrong, and that is, war is good for the economy.
So you have temporary benefits.
Oh, these people have come in.
You know, labor is so cheap.
Daniel, we don't have to mow our lawn anymore.
They'll work for a couple bucks.
That sort of thing.
That doesn't work that way.
But in wartime, they say, oh, having a war is good for unemployment.
Yeah, everybody's employed or forced to become a slave, go to some country and fight and face deadly weapons and all of this stuff.
So it doesn't work.
And that's the way I think it is with immigration.
And I think the founders recognize that.
They have set up some rules to follow.
But then the welfare system makes it much more harmful.
Now, it used to be that we would send some help elsewhere.
But in this case, and I believe those statistics, when they say mass immigration right now, is a drain on wealth because they can get in front of the line.
And they say, oh, you're not a very compassionate person.
Well, maybe being interested in sound money and property rights and volunteerism might have a compassionate element to it, far superior to these economic planners that want to deal with it.
Now we have people coming in, and if they need medical care, and I believe you can find out times when the veteran gets bumped around, the poor people get bumped around, and they say, well, we have to move them to the front of the line.
But it's a mess.
It isn't following even a volunteer because what they have to do is, I keep thinking it shouldn't be that complicated when a lot of people come in.
The old days, we always have people crossing property lines.
They used to put up a sign, no trespassing.
But there's a lot of trespassing going in, and they're getting money from people.
So it is punishing people.
And yes, they may come in and they may take a job and they might take a job that lowers the wages for somebody else.
But no, I just think that you could have a good case for generous immigration.
I always thought the work program was pretty ideal in the sense that a lot of people would come in.
I thought it was a lot better than sending foreign aid to a country.
Let the people come in and work and take the money back with them.
How does that hurt Americans?
Now, that is a problem, but that's not exactly what I think the question meant.
The mass immigration is basically very rarely an economic benefit.
I think it challenges freedom, and I think it challenges prosperity on the long run.
Generous Immigration Debate 00:04:09
Yeah.
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And now, Dr. Paul, let's go to the last question.
Oh, here's a light-hearted one, right?
You picked it, not me.
This is from Liberty and Justice for All.
And they ask, what are your thoughts on the Chicago economic theory?
What do they get right and which policies do you disagree with and why?
Can Austrian and Chicago libertarians and conservatives work together to accomplish common goals or are they two conflicting?
Austrian school versus Chicago school?
Well, I'm surprised somebody would think that I'd be totally confused.
A lot of times I am confused.
But with this, the question is, could they work together?
And I think of all the people I work together with, I would say a good person at the Austrian school, yes, and at Chicago school, we should work together.
The big issue has been the gold standard monetary policy.
The Keynesian type economists actually praised Milton Friedman and apologized to him because he was arguing the case, the problem in the Depression was monetary, and he was on the side of print, print, print, and digging up.
So he was an interventionist, came there.
And I think why some libertarians can't stand him is he qualifies as libertarian.
He wants to be called a libertarian.
But then when he comes up with a very important issue like the monetary position, so that once again, he sort of mocked it, even though on several occasions I sort of had like a pseudo-debate.
We had a conversation on TV and all.
And he was always very much of a gentleman and he would concede points.
He was like a professor and all.
But no, some of the libertarians really don't want to deal with them at all.
But, you know, I always thought there's an opening anytime there's an opening.
But sometimes if there's an opening, say, with a progressive Democrat, you almost might get further along than that than if you're a die-hard Chicagoing because they're going to be sticking to it.
But I think the fact that the market, I think Milton Friedman, I liked his free to choose stuff.
Free to choose, yeah.
And that was good.
And if he could promote the benefits of free enterprise and free markets, I think that would be very beneficial.
No, I'm all for working with people.
And I found that working with young people sometimes is a little bit easier than a professor who's been around teaching Keynesianism for 30 years.
You know, I sort of am reluctant, but I'll be polite and hope they forget about it.
All right.
Well, Dr. Paul, thanks for answering the questions.
And back over to you, very good, and thank you.
It's a lot of fun.
I wish we could do more of this, and we're going to try to do more of it.
So thank you for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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