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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1483 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 3, 2025

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The argument is that Gold and Silver are the only units of account specified in the constitution.

So what? Again, I do not see how anything useful follows from that fact. Here's the only mention of gold in the Constitution:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

We can immediately notice several things: a) it never says gold and silver are "units of account", it just bans states from introducing legal tenders that aren't gold and silver b) it actually contains no limits on the action of the Federal Government. Beyond that, however, the line from "states can only declare gold as legal tender" and "investment in gold can not be taxed" is not at all clear to me. It's like saying "English is an official language of the US government, therefore any university course taught in English should be free". Like what's the fricking connection between the one and the other?! Those are different things!

And BTW it is obvious this section only limits the States and not the Feds because Feds can enter into Treaties and Alliances, or coin money, of course. And when something that is prohibited overall is concerned (like Nobility) it is mentioned twice - once here and once in limitations on Congress.

And ever since we went off the gold standard, or probably when FDR confiscated all the gold, this part of the constitution quietly became obsolete.

But it did not. States still didn't make anything to be legal tender. Federal government made the paper dollar legal tender, but the Constitution contains no limitations on the action of the Feds in that regard. You may argue that was a stupid move economically or abhorrent morally (I agree gold confiscation definitely was), but there's nothing the Constitution can help you with here. And not by omission - there's a big part that contains things that the Congress can't do - just making paper money legal tender is not in the list.

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