Late 1800s up to around WW1 - laissez faire worked great. Econ metrics like we've never had before without the debt/spending excesses. No Fed and no income tax needed. We had "deflation" and it was a good thing. 1921 - Averted an earlier version of the Great Depression. Fed did nothing (rates were left around 7%) and the gov't actually cut spending sharply. We were out of the woods within a year or two. These are just two examples from the pre-Keynesian past. The textbooks do their best to cherry pick, spin history and make it look like Keynesian ideas worked or "would've worked if we only spent more." That should have been discredited decades ago. You only have to look at the current state of the US and most of the Western world to see what it leads to.
You know, if you'd take your meds regularly as prescribed you might even notice you and I frequently agree on politics and economics.
zdreg is the guy who disagrees with you, then goes on to explain why...and you realize he just said exactly what you said but took credit for it.
There was a group wanting to try that in Vermont, I believe. I'm not sure how far they could go with it.
local currency the german way: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/23/local-currencies-german-chiemgauer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6333063.stm
Could be? New money systems are popping up all over. Utah legalized gold and silver for payment in transactions. Bitcoins is a novel "computer currency" more suited towards the technically adept. There's an interesting thread in the Forex Forum, if you're interested. North Dakota chartered their own State Bank 100 years ago, which uses profits from fractional reserve loan creation to fund the State budget. Not a new idea, but 17 other States are now considering a similar "public" Bank (http://www.allgov.com/Where_is_the_Money_Going/ViewNews/17_States_Considering_State_Banks_120229). That's another solution in itself - nationalize banking. The real crux of the issue is private bankers loan the publics money for their own profit. The Dakota Bank operates within the existing monetary system and "nationalizes" those profits by using them towards the general welfare (roads, schools, healthcare etc). It's a start. Since banks effectively loan the publics capital, then it should be the public who receive the overwhelming share of the profits from those loans. It gets even more perverse when one considers banks buy much of State and Federal debt, effectively loaning our own money back to us for a profit. Our money system is founded in ignorance and designed to bleed the 99% dry. It's time for a real change. Egold and Liberty Dollars is just the start. The real catalyst will be the eventual dollar collapse, a la Greece, Italy and Portugal. In prosperous times, nobody cares. But the FED mismanaged the economy so badly, they brought on this debasement themselves. Now the market wants alternatives to the US peso..
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