The Plowboy Interview

Enlarge Image Image Gallery

GOLD: THE MONEY OF THE PEOPLE

As this issue of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS(R) approaches deadline, over 12 million men and women in the United States are unemployed, and our cities are filled with thousands of homeless, hungry people. As ofthe end of 1982, production had dropped for 17 months in a row, the longest consecutive fall since the Great Depression. And our national debt has exceeded $1 trillion. Furthermore, such tragedies are compounded by the fact that eastern-bloc Communist and Third World nations owe over $850 billion on loans ... which, if not repaid, could cause some of our nation's biggest banks-and perhaps even the international banking system itself-to collapse. And all this is happening in a country that just a short time ago had the world's highest living standard and its strongest economy.

The blame for this disastrous state of affairs has been laid at many doors. OPEC, the World Bank, Japanese imports, high interest rates, Reaganomics, and so on. But Ron Paul-a gentleman who has served in the House ofRepresentatives in the 94th, 96th, 97th, and now the 98th Congress and is also a member of the House Banking Committee-thinks that these "causes" are all just symptoms of a much greater evil, and he's been predicting our present economic chaos for years. Unlike most doomsayers, however, Paul claims to have a solution to our fiscal woes.

Recently, staffer Sara Pacher went to Washington, D. C. to talk to the Congressman, a gracious and articulate doctor who studied internal medicine at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pittsburgh ... served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force ... and has a private medical practice in Lake Jackson, Texas, where he lives with his wife Carol and their five children.

After spending a few hours with this advocate of individual freedom and sound currency, Sara concluded that it's probably no coincidence that "In God We Trust" first appeared on American money in 1864, at the end of the Civil War ... which was another period in our history when the government tried to pass off worthless "greenbacks" as valuable currency.

PLOWBOY: Most Americans are aware-many because the truth has touched their very lives-that our economy is facing its worst crisis in 50 years. Just how did we manage to get into such a mess?

PAUL: Well, in some ways, the story is a complicated one, but a major factor in our economic downfall-if not the most influential -has been the deliberate destruction of our money. You simply cannot have a healthy economy without a sound currency. Consider, if you will, how difficult it would be to build a house if your yardstick were to change its length each day: Can you imagine what kind of structure would result if a carpenter used a "standard" measure that was 16 " one day, 32 " the next, then 56 ", then 43 "? And that's essentially what we're trying to do ... run an economy using a value measurement that continually fluctuates.