Kevin Patrick for House of Delegates

"Death and Taxes,"  the only two unavoidable things in life, if we are to take this at face value.  What the few lines above show, is that we are losing money at a remarkable rate; a dangerous rate.  In fact, we are losing so much money/wealth/value that it puts in us a vulnerable position; one which is very similar to the one the Soviet Union was in during the 1980's. 

Prices are higher.  Well, sort of; but not really.  Our money is just worth less, nearly worthless compared to the values of the early part of the last century.  Why has this happened, how has this happened?  It comes from a flawed monetary policy.  Printing off paper when we are out of money is not an effective way of producing wealth.  It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

We have all seen the photos from after WWI, where German children are building a small castle out of blocks of money, and it is not enough to buy a loaf of bread.  We can also look to the current situation in Zimbabwe, where the inflation has recently broken the world record, at 1400%.  The reason that such a picture could ever exist is the same reason for those five lines at the top of this page.  What we need is sound money.  This means backing our money with something which has value, a universally recognized substance which humans say has quality and value. Gold has ever been the most popular, with silver coming in second.

This is the Economic Theory of Subjective Value: we decide what we want and what we will pay to get it.  For most people, baseball cards are not a good retirement savings plan, as children we all thought it would be, but we can see now that if we want money for a thing first we have to have someone willing to pay for it.  This is the basics of Subjective Value.  When a currency means "this much of a certain thing" it is less like to lose its value.  The Dollar used to mean 'a certain weight of gold,' and that allowed us to actually store and use real wealth.

A 5% inflation rate means that every year, the government effectively steals 5% of your earnings.  This does not include the nearly 33% that it takes outright; and that is an entirely different problem all together. Coming in to a nearly half of what all Americans make in a given year.  Most people effectively work from January to July for the government.  This is servitude.

The solution: get rid of the central bank (The Federal Reserve) by repealing the Federal Reserve Act in US Congress, make Congress do what the Constitution tells them to do and print and regulate the value of the currency; back our money with sound value.  Allow free-market competition in the markets by allowing gold and silver to be used in all exchanges.

Bringing our troops home, and ending this American empire will keep us from spending $2 trillion dollars that could have been spent here.

Do not spend more than we make.  Do no use artificially created money and credit.  Begin paying off our debts.  For us to live within our means and do what we can now means we will not be sticking our grandchildren with debt they did not earn.  This will be one of the first American generations in quite some time to leave their children less well off than they were.  That is a shame.

We can do a lot by writing our Representatives on the Hill, and voting for those who will return prosperity to this country.  This includes people on the local, State, and National levels.  Let's reverse the pattern of those five lines at the top of this page.