The U.S. should return to a gold standard

The case modifications that Pro has thrown into every single round have become abusive. My opponent"s case has been a moving target for this entire debate, wasting much of this debate that has focused on that case as a result of Pro's failure to think through his own case before this started. Adding whole new legs to his plan in the final round, as he did at several points, is particularly bad, as this allows me only one round to attack what is essentially a brand new case. Voters, take this into consideration. Now, I'm going to modify the order to focus on key issues. 1. The History of the GS Pro hasn"t mentioned this since R2. I"ve shown that the GS, throughout American history, has done far more harm than good, leading to giant fluctuations in the value of our currency. We have no other examples of a GS, so this is the only comparison we have between Pro"s case and a real life example, and it does him no favors. I"ve shown that shifting back to the GS will be even more harmful now, and explained how Pro"s modifications don"t solve for many of those harms. Based on real world evidence alone, you can vote Con right here; Pro"s entire case is contingent on a GS leading to a more stable currency, and that is empirically false. 2. The Value of Fiat Currency Pro hasn"t mentioned this since R3. He"s cited no unique harms of status quo fiat currency. He"s stated more than a few times that there is some harm to inflation, but a) I"ve already shown that moderate inflation isn"t clearly harmful, b) inflation happens in his case as well, c) he incurs far more inflation, causing spikes that are actually harmful, and d) his case involves even more extensive fiat that allows for manipulation of the price of gold and amounts of currency. Given all this, the status quo (i.e. my case) is net neutral if not net beneficial for all the various trade benefits and financial security it"s afforded us. Even if you buy that Pro has some benefits, he has to actually show that his whole case, warts and all, is better than the status quo, something he"s utterly failed to do. 3. Harms of the Shift Pro hasn"t mentioned this since R4. The costs of shifting over to a new currency and the legal ramifications of exchanging currency for new notes alone are clear, objective reasons to vote him down. These would incur huge costs to the country that would have to be paid up front when our currency would have to appear the strongest. Other countries will drop the dollar as reserve currency, the perception of its strength will plummet, and, regardless of what exchange rate the US itself sets, international markets would bring on the pain by erecting high tariff walls that will demolish US trade deals. 4. Harms of the Debt I've already explained the pitfalls of having debt as we shift to the GS (financial collapse) and the harms of having debt while on the GS (defaulting). Pro's only response to all of this is that we can pay it off by selling federal land. First, this is one of those case expansions I was talking about. He's mentioned previously that he would pay off the debt, but not how he would do so. Buy my argument (from R3) that he will pay off our debt by printing more money, which leads to rapid inflation of the dollar. Pro didn"t respond, that"s his problem. Second, Pro isn't clear about where his numbers came from. All the real estate owned by the US government is only $1.8 trillion,[20] and our oil and gas resources on and offshore is not nearly so high as his TIME article asserts. We have access to 18 billion barrels of oil, worth roughly $1 trillion. There are more than 2 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, which amounts to another $9 trillion.[21, 22] This excludes costs of drilling, refining and transporting these goods, which would substantially reduce these values. What are we losing? Besides increases in pollution and accelerating global climate change through accelerated resource extraction, we would lose wildlife refuges, national parks, national monuments, valuable resources, control over vast swaths of the country, and anything built on these lands. All of this in exchange for paying off a little over half of the debt, which doesn't solve the problem. Third, none of this solves for future debt. If we choose to pay off our debt solely using federal lands, that is still a finite resource. We cannot simply continue to sell federal land to pay off other countries to whom we owe money, and we are almost certain to generate new debt at some point in the future. All Pro is doing, at best, is delaying the harms that come from being on the GS with debt. 5. The Harms of Tariffs Gaming the markets in our favor will cause countries to raise tariff walls. Pro drops this. Prices would skyrocket at home and for American products abroad, reversing effects of setting our own exchange rates. Pro dropped that other countries won"t accept so much money flowing out of their economies. They will erect tariff walls, and that will increase the price of US goods and reduce trade to the US. That alone would have devastating effects on the US economy. Pro acknowledges his support of a tariff, but shifts to focusing on "countries such as China that run off of slave labour", which is yet another new case expansion, as is this point about abolishing corporate taxes and "deregulating industry." Voters should ignore these points, but just in case, Pro provides no reason to believe that these tactics would accomplish any of his goals, and his tariff could still be applied to any country where workers are paid less than US workers (which is almost everywhere [23]) as they are comparatively "slave labor." So he incurs the same harms I"ve cited: other countries will respond negatively, destroying trade deals and damaging our currency. Even if this only happens with China, that"s almost $600 billion lost in trade deals.[18] 6. Exchange Rates I never said that American goods will be cheaper to foreigners and that foreign goods will be more expensive to Americans. Tariff will cause all prices to rise. And Pro"s right that inflation will also raise those prices; competition will ensure that no one will buy American products if they're more expensive. Pro returns to his points from R3 about the Franc to the Euro, weakly tying it to his case. I already addressed this, Pro dropped those responses. The Euro is a currency. It"s stable and trusted because multiple countries use it and abide by values established by international markets. Gold is a commodity, and if you"re unilaterally fiating its price, you"re inherently reducing its stability. International markets won"t agree to that price, which removes that source of stability. I actually agree that no inflation can be good and out of control inflation is bad, which appears to be Pro's main point here. I never argued that having higher inflation was good. Pro's plan is the one that causes out of control inflation, not the status quo. Pro argues that, as long as currency is mostly staying within the US, there won"t be inflation. This is absurd: if you print more money, and that money is valued based on a finite supply of gold, then the value of that money decreases as you print more of it, regardless of where it goes. That inflation harms citizens, whose savings will practically vanish. Yes, they can bring gold here and exchange for the same value of money regardless, but this flow of gold in and out of the country is harmful, as I've shown multiple times. This exchange is not beneficial. 7. The Treasurer Pro says that the Treasurer, a position appointed by the president, is a better representative of the country than the Fed chair, which is also appointed by the president. If Pro"s point was "to demonstrate that the Fed serves no good purpose", then why did he replace it with someone who has the same function and the same checks on them? Pro says the Fed is owned by the banks, but that"s a bare assertion and a false one.[24] The only difference is that it"s one man vs. an entire bureaucratic organization, which means more snap decisions, more errors, and more partisanship. 8. The Grading System Assuming that the FRR is the only basis for grading banks, regulators can still be bribed, there can still be conflicts of interest, and people can still post incorrect grades. The various pooling tactics and artificial rating boosts that the housing market engaged in was objectively incorrect, but that didn't stop them from doing it.[25] Pro argues that we can print off as many notes as we want and have banks hoard them all across the country without any consequences. The fact that these aren"t in circulation doesn"t alter the fact that they are meant to represent the sum total of gold and silver in this country. If the amount of them goes well above that total, then one of two things happen. Either the amount of precious metals each note stands for goes down, which is inflation, or the government pretends that they have enough notes to cover every ounce of gold and silver out there, which risks another another banking collapse as people realize that the grading system doesn't represent the actual amount of gold, but rather a set of notes that is also massively overvalued. Conclusion: Every plank of Pro's plan risks financial collapse, all for the misbegotten view that fiat currency is harmful and the GS strengthens it. Pro is turning gold itself into fiat currency, damaging any perception of strength the dollar currently has, throwing away countless trade deals, and all to support a currency that has consistently failed this country. Even Pro has lost faith in the success of his case, consistantly shifting away from his own ideas. Don't support a case that even Pro won't. Vote Con. 20. http://on.wsj.com... 21. http://bit.ly... 22. http://bit.ly... 23. http://bit.ly... 24. http://bit.ly... 25. http://bit.ly...