GOLDBUG FUCKTARDS

New Krugman:

Meanwhile, the modern world’s closest equivalent to the classical gold standard is the euro, which puts European countries back under more or less the same constraints they faced when gold ruled. It’s true that the European Central Bank can print money if it chooses to, but individual countries, like nations on the gold standard, can’t. And who would hold up these countries’ recent experience as an example of something we’d like to emulate? 

So how can we rationalize the modern goldbug position? Basically, it depends on the claim that runaway inflation is just around the corner.

Why have so many people found this claim persuasive? John Maynard Keynes famously dismissed the gold standard as a “barbarous relic,” noting the absurdity of yoking the fortunes of a modern industrial society to the supply of a decorative metal. But he also acknowledged that “gold has become part of the apparatus of conservatism and is one of the matters which we cannot expect to see handled without prejudice.” 

And so it remains to this day. Conservative-minded people tend to support a gold standard — and to buy gold — because they’re very easily persuaded that “fiat money,” money created on a discretionary basis in an attempt to stabilize the economy, is really just part of the larger plot to take away their hard-earned wealth and give it to you-know-who. 

More here.

Here's the short version: people who want a return to the gold standard simply don't, or refuse to, understand how money works.  And because conservatives don't trust any thoughts longer than a couple of sentences, and because gold, as a concept, is pretty easy to understand, the gold standard is the proverbial shiny object making right-wingers go "wooooo!"

The bottom line is that the global economy is enormous.  And we want it to grow for numerous reasons.  And when the economy gets larger, it necessarily needs more and more money in circulation in order to allow the increasing number of transactions in a growing economy to actually happen.  But tying the value of money to a gold reserve essentially disallows the growth of the money supply, which necessarily impedes the growth of economic transactions simply because there isn't enough money in circulation allowing them to happen.  This, therefore, stagnates the economy.  Consequently, it's fucking retarded to fix your money supply to a gold reserve.

But goldbugs refuse to understand this.  Consequently, goldbugs are fucktards.

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