lucifer_sam

OK. I understand, you don't like philosophy as basis for politics. I'll try not going balls deep into it in this thread from here on out.

The gold standard was abandoned as a dissociative tool so that a globalized economy would be less susceptible to economic catastrophe. Libertarianism addresses this by advocating decentralization of public wealth. If the NYSE was split among (for the sake of example) 20 different city-states, that wouldn't be an issue.

Free trade and open immigration are necessary because they allow for the flux of wealth and labor between communities. If one is short on labor, and another wealth, an open migration & trade policy would allow those communities to meet their individual needs. As an economic strata, libertarianism is basically the idea of only using the resources of where you live & work to generate wealth.

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first.am

Mykonos

Open immigration policies are nothing if not beneficial. Immigration fills in for the people who aren't willing to work in the country they're accepted into while also generating more production from a higher workforce of workers skilled in areas that might not necessarily be readily available in a home population. Not to mention the fact that it's an incredibly humanitarian policy, allowing people to find asylum instead of making them die in whatever storm of suffering is sweeping over their country.

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lucifer_sam

^ Couldn't have said it better myself.

Also, isn't Britain is trying to migrate further away from Socialism? You know, the "Big Society" thing, taking the burden off the government and pushing those responsibilities onto its individuals.

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Mykonos

It depends. Some people (mostly BNP/EDL yokels) have been calling for us to basically drop any pretense of remotely left-leaning policies and fall into the anarchic/objectivist society they want to see, but they get ignored most of the time. A lot of people have actually moved closer to the left way of thinking due to the recent riots, which demonstrated just how broken our society has become under capitalism.

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ThePhanastasio

I actually do enjoy Ayn Rand. I thoroughly enjoyed The Fountainhead in particular.

Anyway - I have heard a lot about the going back to the gold standard nonsense. To me, that makes less than no sense - gold is not nearly as important a commodity now as it was even 50 years ago.

With that said, I wouldn't have total opposition to going to an "oil standard" for this current government.

We do take a **** ton of oil from the middle east and whatnot, but we still have Alaska mainly untapped. That's the one thing America REALLY has that it's not tapping into. If oil was more heavily controlled, America would have a much stronger economy. I firmly believe this.

So, my mantra is "Out with the gold, in with the crude."

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Glad that somebody isn't getting all Environazi about this. I've been thinking about it quite some time.

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Janszoon

What's the basis for saying Alaskan oil is somehow untapped? It's THE dominant industry in Alaska.

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lucifer_sam

Yeah I'm not sure what you guys are talking about there...the Exxon Valdez happened 22 years ago and Alaska is home to the largest single conduit oil pipeline in the world. Maybe I'm gravely mistaken here but I think they've been using it for quite some time.

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hip hop bunny hop

Most illegals who've entered the USA in the past 10 years did so legally; they get work visas and simply overstay because we've no effective means of policing the interior in regards to this matter.

Further, we're already around 9% unemployment (officially) - which does not take into account those who've given up looking for employment and those who are underemployed. Along with these groups, the employed who have minimal skills would be harmed by open immigration.

Why? Because there'd be more people with low skill levels competing for the same number of jobs. This would depress wages which are marginally above the minimum wage & make getting an entry level job harder. This would a disproportionately negative impact on minority (especially NAM) communities, as they tend to be the least educated.

Unless you're taking the long view of trickle down economics, the immediate benefits of this would be felt by (A) those who own businesses making use of such low skill sets & (B) those who can afford domestic help (etc.), such as having someone else clean your house or watch your kid.

Current immigration statutes in the USA are very loose in regards to skilled labor. The fact of the matter is that an "open door" immigration policy may result in more skilled labor, but the majority of the influx of labor would be low to unskilled, with results detailed above.

1) Mass emigration of skilled labor is hardly beneficial to 3rd world countries.
2) A nation's first priority is it's citizens. We should not be the global police nor the global wellfare agency.

Eh? When we had the gold standard it was set at $20.67/ounce. In 1950 gold was at $40/ounce. In 2010 it's $1,410/ounce. Gold Prices Link. Contrast this with crude oil, which is worth a bit under $100 per BBL, each BBL being 42 gallons. Oil Price Link

America's total proven reserves are roughly 21 billion bbls LINK... contrast this with Venezuela, which has 297 billion bbls LINK...

Anyways, if you want to have a discussion regards oil reserves within the USA, are largest quantities are in the form of unconventional oil (link) - and have a whole host of problems regarding extraction & processing.

This means, for the USA to have a petroleum backed dollar, we'd most likely have to import oil just to back our own currency.

Further, I must ask: how would the USA, which currently has the dollar as the international reserve currency, benefit from having the value of the dollar increase? How would that have a positive impact on our already massive trade deficits?

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Firstly, most people who came over here legally on a visa are probably not untrained. If it were cheap to enter the country, there would be no illegal immigration.

Secondly, lllegalizing immigration has done nothing, at all, whatsoever from stopping people to come here illegally.

Thirdly, and what a racist narrow minded sheep fellow such as yourself will blatantly ignore, is the fact that unskilled immigrants will only take jobs from unskilled citizens because they don't need to be paid as much. You see, there's no logic in the concept that unskilled laborers would somehow take jobs from skilled laborers. Furthermore, if you legalized immigration, these unskilled laborers would have to adhere to minimum wage laws, therefore making them on equal competitive ground.

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