Gold backed paper is not the same as our current fiat money, because you can only increase the paper if you increase the gold that backs it. The whole point of a gold based currency is to prevent the government from stealing your savings through inflation, and you don't get that with a pure paper system. Basically you have warehouse receipts for gold. Your objection to electronic forms of gold is curious. Most people keep most of their money in a bank. Your money there is mostly just bits on a hard drive, plus a little cash in the vault that represents only a fraction of the money deposited. And none of that is accessible if the power goes out. So unless you keep all your cash in a mattress I don't understand your objection to electronic gold.
This is tiresome. A state incurs debts, and is owed debts. For each such debt the state must say what it is to be payed in. Article 1, section 10 does not let the state make those debts payable in anything but gold or silver coin. Saying that the state has made a debt payable in gold or silver coin is the same thing as saying that only gold or silver coin is accepted as payment. So your weasel wording accomplishes nothing.
I don't object to electronic gold, I object to only electronic, or only gold. Paper is a necessity, and paper can be printed to excess. You say it can't be if it's backed by gold, and I say it can be and will be "in a pinch". No nation on Earth wants to be straitjacketed by a gold standard which is why they all went off it decades ago.
The political elites hate gold because they want to be able to promise lots of government spending (mostly entitlements of various sorts) but know it would be politically infeasible to raise taxes sufficient to pay for all the promises made. Suppose for example, that the neocons actually had to pay for their wars on an ongoing basis, and were not allowed to borrow money for them. Each year the Iraq war would require about $1,000 in extra income taxes per household. How popular would that war be with the Republicans if they saw a $1000 annual increase in their taxes as a result? War mongers hate the gold standard because while it is easy enough to whip up enthusiasm among the citizenry for letting other citizens they don't know go to battle and face death or permanent injury, it is much harder to get them to pay for it. War is always highly inflationary. But big government nanny staters also hate the gold standard -- if we were to balance our budget today with current spending income taxes would have to more than double. How popular would everything from Medicare to food stamps to housing subsidies be if people saw their income taxes double? So I like a gold standard because it does tie politicians in a straight jacket. It means they can't have a government program unless they pay for it, and that would force them to adopt more realistic policies. The "flexibility" of a fiat paper standard is nothing more that the flexibility to rob the citizenry of their savings any time the politicians see fit.
You already won the argument a few pages ago. Funny how some of these turds hate Obama's excessive spending, but the neo-con type spending gets their stamp of approval. Fuck all the hypocrisy around here.
Wow you realize how stupid you sound? More military and Federal Workers support Ron Paul financially than any other Neocon candidate by a longshot. Why do you hate our soldiers so much? Imagine the Commander in Chief gets less money from our median income volunteer fighters than some Conservative Statesman. Problem with guys like you is that you oppose Ron Paul but you only do so because you have Been trained by the MSM to think that you believe what you say you do. The funny thing is you don't even believe what you are saying. This is evidenced by your ludicrous talking points which have no basis in reality. they are the exact thing spewed by the Fox News pro war neocons and leftists who are pro welfare state. People like you need to learn how America became great and why Freedom is a new concept Or you just need to take your apparently undeveloped brain which can't seem to compute logic And fuck off. In my not so humble opinion.
With all the thousands of pages of argument and political posturing here in P&R do you think a single poster has been convinced to change from liberal to conservative or conservative to liberal? From what I have seen - NOT A ONE! If anything, every one's political leaning has just become more cemented in place.