"Taxation not only supports the currency directly due to the need to obtain the currency in order to pay the tax, it supports it indirectly by fostering the general belief that the currency is actually worth something. After all, if the government is prepared to accept the currency it creates, and ONLY the currency it creates, in payment of taxes then the currency must have genuine value, right? On the other hand, if the government were to announce that there will be no more taxation and that all future government expenses will be paid by turning on a monetary printing press then light-bulbs would suddenly appear above the heads of millions of people. People who previously hadn't given the nature of modern money a second thought and who hadn't stopped to consider why a piece of paper with the number 100 printed on it should be worth 100-times as much as a similar piece of paper with the number 1 printed on it would quickly come to realise that if the government can just print as much money as it wants then the money must have no real value; a realisation that would lead to the question: why should I work hard for something the government can produce in unlimited amounts at no cost to itself?"
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Derek - safehaven.com is an excellent resource for
Austrian and gold bug analysis papers. Many of the
same ones from kitco, but others as well.
In fact, they had a curious article today by a guy
claiming the recent gold correction was due to the IMF
dumping 500 tonnes of US gold on the market (per your
concerns on this a few months ago)
d.
--- Derek Jensen <derekj72@...> wrote: