Turgot's attempt... showed how the results that had followed Law's issues of paper money must follow all such issues. As regards currency inflation, Turgot saw that the issue of paper money beyond the point where it is convertible into coin is the beginning of disaster—that a standard of value must have value, just as a standard of length must have length, or a standard of capacity, capacity, or a standard of weight, weight. He showed that if a larger amount of the circulating medium is issued than is called for by the business of the country, it will begin to be discredited, and that paper, if its issue be not controlled by its relation to some real standard of value, inevitably depreciates no matter what stamp it bears. Turgot developed his argument [on currency inflation] with a depth, strength, clearness, and breadth, which have amazed every dispassionate reader from that day to this. It still remains one of the best presentations of this subject ever made; and what adds to our wonder is that it was not the result of a study of authorities, but was worked out wholly from his own observation and thought. Up to this time there were no authorities and no received doctrine on the subject; there were simply records of financial practice more or less vicious; it was reserved for this young student, in a letter not intended for publication, to lay down for the first time the great law in which the modern world, after all its puzzling and costly experiences, has found safety.
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White, ibid., Seven Great Statesmen...Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
» Anne Robert Jacques Turgot - all quotes »
He [Turgot] now, in 1749, at the age of twenty two, wrote... a letter which has been an object of wonder among political thinkers ever since. Its subject was paper money. Discussing the ideas of John Law, and especially the essay of Terrasson which had supported them, he dissected them mercilessly, but in a way useful not only in those times but in these. ...Terrasson's arguments in behalf of unlimited issues of paper had been put forth in 1720. ...and he declared that the material used for bearing the sign of value is indifferent ...and that if a sovereign issues enough of paper promises, he will be able to loan or even to give money in unlimited amounts to his needy subjects. ...without danger of depreciation. ...Terrasson also made the distinction between the note of a business man and notes issued by a government, that the former comes back and must be paid, but that the latter need not come back and can be kept afloat forever by simple governmental command, thus becoming that blessed thing—worshiped widely, not many years since, in our own country—"fiat money."
Andrew Dickson White
He [Turgot] now, in 1749, at the age of twenty two, wrote... a letter which has been an object of wonder among political thinkers ever since. Its subject was paper money. Discussing the ideas of John Law, and especially the essay of Terrasson which had supported them, he dissected them mercilessly, but in a way useful not only in those times but in these.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Question: You wanna gut that safety net...
Ron Paul: But the safety net doesn't work.
Question: Tell me why it doesn't work.
Ron Paul: It does work for some people, but overall it ultimately fails, because you spend more money than you have, and then you borrow to the hilt. Now we have to borrow $800 billion a year just to keep the safety net going. It's going to collapse when the dollar collapses, you can't even fight the war without this borrowing. And when the dollar collapses, you can't take care of the elderly of today. They're losing ground. Their cost of living is going up about 10%, even though the government denies it, we give them a 2% cost of living increase.
Question: So do you think the gold standard would fix that?
Ron Paul: The gold standard would keep you from printing money and destroying the middle class. Every country where you have runaway inflation, there's no middle class. Mexico, there's no middle class, you have a huge poor class, and a lot of wealthy people. Today we have a growing poor class, and we have more billionaires than ever before. So we're moving into third world status...
Question: Who is the safety net that you're speaking of, who does benefit from all those programs and all those agencies?
Ron Paul: Everybody on a short term benefits for a time. If you build a tenement house by the government, for about 15 or 20 years somebody might live there, but you don't measure who paid for it: somebody lost their job down the road, somebody had inflation, somebody else suffered. But then the tenement house falls down after about 20 years because it's not privately owned, so everybody eventually suffers. But the immediate victims aren't identifiable, because you don't know who lost the job, and who had the inflation, the victims are invisible. The few people who benefit, who get some help from government, everyone sees, "oh! look what we did!", but they never say instead of what, what did we lose. And unless you ask that question, we'll go into bankruptcy, we're in the early stages of it, the dollar is going down, our standard of living is going down, and we're hurting the very people that so many people wanna help, especially the liberals...Ron Paul
No, there is no world-wide standard for the determination of provincialism. There is only one standard by which to judge men and women, and that standard is not so much one of brains and education as it is of culture and heart. Kindness seems to be the one golden metewand by which to measure how really civilized and catholic one may be.
Thomas R. Marshall
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, Baron de Laune
Turing, Alan
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