Puddles said:
I'm not completely caught up on the Federal Reserve arguments. There's always a chance that Ron Paul has a good point there.
You can read this chapter on Monetary Policy from Ron Paul's "Liberty Defined"
http://books.google.com/books?id=KGsAPgSJpIwC&pg=PT125
It's barely 2.5 pages long, and if you have questions about his stance on a "gold standard", I can answer them. I'll just point out now that many people argue that Ron Paul is crazy to want to go back to a gold standard, but he's not arguing exactly for that.
Ron Paul just wants something to prevent the Federal Reserve and the federal government from creating money out of thin air. As crazy as it seems, the Federal Reserve really did give out $16 trillion of loans backed by nothing at all. With a press of a key, big corporate banks all of a sudden see that they have more money to use.
Puddles said:
Policies I think would have a good chance of making it through a Ron Paul presidency: slashing federal spending on programs millions of people need and use, NOT raising revenues, cutting the capital gains tax, gutting the Affordable Care Act, gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and I'm sure there are plenty of others.
While Ron Paul is principled, he is not heartless. If somehow a bill passed both the House and Senate to completely wipe out Social Security, I doubt Ron Paul would sign it unless it comes with ways to transition away and care for the people that lived their lives assuming it would be around.
On the topic of Social Security, Ron Paul on monetary policy is very relevant here as Social Security checks pay out a certain amount each month. As long as the Federal Reserve keeps giving out money to banks, the purchasing power of the dollar goes down. Just as my example of everyone getting $10,000, prices of goods will go up, and now a Social Security check is only able to buy, say, half a dozen eggs instead of a whole dozen.
Sure, I could see Ron Paul vetoing tax increases, but he would also veto increasing the debt ceiling. In fact, he wouldn't have hyped up this debt ceiling debate saying that unless the ceiling is increased, the US's AAA rating would be lowered. And we know how that turned out.
Ron Paul has pointed out that if too much debt is the problem in the US (and he agrees it's a big problem), how is increasing the debt ceiling the solution?
Ron Paul would want to freeze the spending budget to whatever it was the previous year. That seems pretty reasonable where a business that isn't making enough money to decide not to hire more people or look into expanding into new locations.
Except those in Congress say Ron Paul's freeze would actually be a cut! Well, sure, you could look at it as a cut if you were expecting an automatic increase every year.
