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Oct. 2, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
15:57
#AskRonPaul: Fighting Recession, Protecting the Constitution, Social Security, and Income Tax

#AskRonPaul -- In this segment we take your questions and concerns from Twitter/X!

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Time Text
Are We Due for Another Recession? 00:03:10
Yes, Dr. Paul, we're going to put you in the hot seat.
And we got these questions from Twitter.
And this is Ask Ron Paul.
So we're going to go ahead and ask you some questions.
And our first question comes from Empure Hunter.
And he asks, do you think the recent Fed activities will lead to a 2008 level recession?
What do you think, Dr. Paul?
Are we headed for another recession?
Yes, and that's not a difficult prediction.
Because anybody that knows and understands anything about monetary policy and spending, the die had been set.
And I date it, and everybody that knows what I talk about, it's been around since 1971.
So it's not just 2008, the inflation of 2008 to get out of the mess we had temporarily.
But since 1971, the Fed had license to steal, license to print money, license to counterfeit, license to play around with all the special interests, whether it's foreign war or domestic activity or pharmaceutical companies.
They all have the accommodation.
So it is something that is set in place.
08 was a bad year.
And the recession was very bad.
People got a little afraid.
Could this be it?
Could we really have the collapse?
Well, it came close to it, but they bailed it out with another shot of heroin.
You know, they keep, I wish they would worry about this addiction and the addiction to counterfeiting money, which is fraud, which is illegal.
It's unconstitutional.
The whole system is run on that, on that program.
So that's where the real problem is.
And so, yes, I'm not a bit surprised that it will lead to a new, you can't avoid it.
Something's going to happen to adjust for the activities since 2008 and QE and all the massive inflation that's going on.
And right now, you know, things look superficially, they can argue, well, the economy's doing half decently.
There are jobs and the inflation rate isn't too bad.
So what are they doing?
They're goosing up this money supply.
They say, we'll lower interest rates because we don't want to have a hard landing.
So we want to do that.
So they go ahead and they do this.
They lower interest rates, which means they have to print more money, which raises prices in the marketplace and makes the special interests, whether they're big business or labor unions, they'll say, we don't have enough money.
Give us some more money.
Give us more contracts to build more bombs.
We need that.
And also, our labor is not being reimbursed because it hasn't kept up with inflation, which is true.
But just going to the government and say, well, we recognize that.
And we know if Congress will put pressure on the Fed because the Fed is trained to accommodate the Congress because the Congress is a reflection of trying to deal with the people.
But eventually they lose ability to do this.
So yes, we're going to have another recession.
Social Security's Future 00:12:38
And whether that just gets bad and lasts for a couple of months or a couple of years, nobody knows that.
But eventually, you know, the dollar gets wiped out.
And if you're measuring the value of the dollar since 1971, that very, very important day, it has lost a lot of value.
And the best measurement of the loss of value is what has gold done since that.
Went from $35 an ounce up to $2,600 a month.
And it could double and triple before it's all over.
It's a sad situation.
And it's all couched in the terms that the people are taking care of us.
They're making us safe.
They're taking care of people's needs.
And I think that people need to look for the devil in the details.
Very well said, Dr. Paul.
And I think look no further than the grocery store if you want to see inflation.
All right.
Our next question comes from Before Liberty.
And he asks, politicians and officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, yet they continually and often willfully violate that oath.
Is there a remedy for this blatantly blatant violation of the oath of office?
Well, I claim we live in a day of nihilism.
You can't find truth and you don't have to worry about natural law.
And in this case, the Constitution was written and such, and the requirement to take an oath to obey the Constitution was supposed to protect the people and their liberties.
Well, it hasn't worked all that well, and it gradually was eroded, and it's eroding more quickly now than ever.
And so it is sort of rote.
They just go.
They take the oath of office.
They don't listen to the words.
They don't know what happens because they have been conditioned both philosophically and psychologically that the Constitution is no longer viable.
We can't do it.
One Congress chairman told me once it's anachronistic.
We don't have to look at the Constitution anymore.
And they don't.
So it's not a serious matter.
And also, they've been taught in colleges and government schools that they don't have to because the Constitution is a living document.
It has to change.
Whatever is necessary, they will do and change it.
Of course, they can.
That's true.
We could change it by amending the Constitution.
It made it difficult.
But no, now they change it by writing regulations and ignoring it.
Just think of every regulation disobeying the law that says the Constitution that it's Congress that's supposed to write these laws, especially the House on Spending and Taxes.
It's just totally ignored, but accepted.
Nobody's going to, they didn't debate that big issue in the debate last night.
So that's what controls things.
It's a conditioning.
It's educational.
It's necessary to feed the monster.
And it's addiction.
And it's a financial addiction that finally and always comes to an end ever since Roman times.
Another great one, Dr. Paul.
I'll go ahead and kick you off to the third question, which comes from Sean Godard.
Is there a way to end Social Security without damaging the working class who have put in the years and count on it to survive in old age?
Well, in a way, that's a mixed bag because not having started Social Security and people being more self-reliant would have prevented it.
And that is difficult.
It's just sort of talking about inflation.
How do you get rid of it?
Somebody's going to get hurt because they've been deceived into thinking that it's a good thing and the government will protect us and they will guard against some people, like in the financial industry.
Oh, they're not allowed to commit fraud.
But the government's allowed to commit fraud.
They just print up the money.
I mean, that's counterfeit.
So I think that Social Security is the same way.
If you try to correct it, there'd be riots in the street.
I mean, they can't do it.
And they're always asking for raises.
And, you know, working people need more money.
Business people need more profits because of the erosion of the value of the dollar.
But they never really talk about the root problem we have.
It's the destruction of the value of the dollar.
They know, and they talk a little bit about, you know, China and a couple other countries, Russia, getting together and use something other than American dollar for exchange to diminish the monopoly control of the dollar.
Yes, they do that, but most people don't pay much attention to that.
But that's what will happen.
There'll be a massive exodus from the dollar, and that will happen.
But the question really is, can we change Social Security and wean people off it?
I don't think so.
That would be trying to wind down some of the spending.
And there's no way that people say, just print more money, stimulate the economy, tax them more, and it'll all work out.
And for decades now, to a degree, because we've been so wealthy, we've gotten away with it.
But the problem right now, the people are getting edgy because they know it can't last.
And that's what they're witnessing, the falling apart.
So Social Security, people are going to lose their Social Security, but the checks are going to continue to come.
They're not going to stop printing checks.
I mean, there'd be so many riots and control.
They're going to get checks that buy less and less.
Well, that's what's happening now.
People on a fixed income and on a Social Security check.
But for anybody to do that in Congress, you know, and reduce the payments and try to salvage the program, which lived off borrowing and debt and having a rich endowment.
That's changing.
That's why people should be concerned.
And so the Social Security system will eventually be eroded enough that they'll have to do something.
But that's when everything else will be needing it too.
We might even have to give up foreign interventionism and stay out of our empire, give up on the empire and give up on the reserve currency because of the events that happen.
But so far, that has not happened.
There's going to be no reform on Social Security that people say, well, boy, at least they're not using the Social Security money and spending it.
Of course, people do generally know there's no money there.
They don't have a box over there.
Oh, this is all Social Security.
No, it all goes into general funding.
They spend it, so they put down IOU notes.
So we have an IOU for all the people.
That's why they say the next generation has to pay for all this.
But the next generation is already here.
They're already paying.
So we're seeing the signs of the warnings that have existed for decades is this is going to be passed on to the young people and others.
And it is being done that there will also always be some people who will be at usually some of the control and are able to manipulate this system.
And if you look at it, the one characteristic of inflation is there's a transfer of wealth from one group to another.
And the wealth leaves the middle class and the poor because the inflation is their tax.
And the people who benefit the most because they get money cheap and they can go on to making more money, you know, is the very wealthy class.
So that's why we have a historic number of billionaires.
And they're talking about when's the first trillionaire going to come about?
But believe me, when that happens, nobody should be elated about that.
There was a time when being a millionaire was a big deal, but not being a big deal, not being a millionaire has gotten to be a big deal too, because everybody thinks they have to be.
So they all want more money.
It's fraud.
It's deceit.
The people think it's an easy deal to get by if they just get better lobbyists to go to Washington and protect their interests.
Very well said, Dr. Paul.
And I think the million-dollar house is now the average house, which was phenomenal back in the day.
So I think you're very spot on.
I'm going to go ahead and close with the last question here, which comes from W.
And he asks, can you explain how the federal income tax is constitutional or unconstitutional?
Well, it's a tricky subject because when you read the Second Amendment, they're legalizing income, put a tax on income.
Technically, they permitted and have permitted those statements.
I think it's hard to just say, no, they didn't do it.
Well, they shouldn't have done it.
And they violated other parts of the Constitution.
The real violation of the income tax is the way they collect it because it's intimidation.
It's a takeover of the wealth of the people.
Because my argument is when you make $1,000 and you worked hard for this and you put that $1,000 in your pocket, it should be yours to spend.
They shouldn't be able to steal from that.
They can't come along and take your wall out and say, well, we need $200 here for this warmongering and we need $200 for this welfare and on.
That's what they do.
So it's the way they collect it.
It's the monetary system that has created the problem.
And the income tax ends up being viciously unconstitutional the way it operates.
The words in the 16th Amendment, you know, they hide behind that and say, well, they legalize taxes on income, and that's it.
So we'll do that.
But it is vicious and it is a thing that has enslaved people.
If you don't have ownership to what you earn, you've been enslaved.
And people know that when times get tough because they keep saying, well, we'll just print the money.
I know we don't have it.
So I think this is a serious problem.
And the income tax, you know, and the whole thing is totally unconstitutional the way it operates.
It's very evil.
It's immoral.
It doesn't go along with our history.
The founders never suggested, boy, can't wait to have an income tax so that we can make an empire.
But that's where we are today.
And we're bankrupt.
And we're rushing to the end of this because the dollar cannot be maintained.
And of course, the biggest threat is when we meet those conditions, what we have is a threat to our liberty.
And just look around at our liberty today.
Look around at what's happening in the Department of Justice and all the things that we do that civil liberties, they're undermined because it's all at the expense of trying to maintain an empire that is unconstitutional and very, very dangerous.
And we ought to look and technically define slavery in a slightly different way because people have been enslaved to this system.
Some people who think they're doing quite well under the system are starting to realize that they've run out of steam and they're running out of wealth and the people are running out of patience because they're getting sick and tired of what they have to live with.
And I think the best example of that is how they finally reacted to what was going on with COVID.
The people stood up and said no more.
Or how they stood up and said, how long are we going to be in Vietnam?
How long are we going to be in Iraq?
And the people have to speak out, but they have to have an understanding of where inflation comes and not buy into the misinformation and the distortion coming from somebody wanting to gouge profits.
Profits don't give it.
Say labor unions don't cause inflation.
It is done by the printing press to accommodate a system that is a form of enslavery.
And that is what we have to deal with.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
And that concludes our show.
Thank you everybody for tuning in today to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
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