By Stephen Buller
It’s been more than a month since the 47th President of the United States was elected, and nobody living today can remember a time when our country didn’t operate on a two-party system. Although the party holding various positions influences laws, court rulings, and other governance, I’ll argue that your daily life is affected far more by our monetary system.
The intent of this article is not to take a political position or cause division. Quite the opposite, I hope to encourage readers to come together with people who have different viewpoints from their own. I believe we have more in common than separates us, and we should focus on more important issues than any one President can affect.
I might even suggest there is a reason our country is so divided, that this is a tactic employed by an ineffective government to direct their citizens’ ire at each other instead of at them. It’s more important than ever that we come together. I’m passionate about the marketplace of ideas and am writing a fantasy novel around this theme: Fight not the other side but those above who divide.
In my opinion, a person’s political affiliation is usually driven by the same things as their morals, philosophy, or general outlook on life – where they were born, who their family and friends are, where they went to school, etc.
In any election cycle, there are usually a few hot-button issues that rile people up and create good rhetoric for candidates to swing voters. I don’t mean to say these issues aren’t important, simply that they’re less important than individuals’ overall wealth and prosperity.
If we focused on class, we could solve so many problems. You may have noticed that neither party’s candidate discussed the federal debt in any substantial way. Also, any points I heard regarding inflation focused on blaming the other party. “Representatives” from both parties are happy to abuse the system for their benefit.
Is the Fed Chairman worth $100M because he’s a savvy investor? Are congresspeople allowed to trade on inside information because they’ve earned it? Are reckless companies bailed out at taxpayer expense because they’re just too darn big to fail?
Most Americans – human beings, in fact – can be happy with a few, simple things: Clean air to breathe, water to drink, healthy food to eat, a roof over our heads, and time with friends and family gets most of us most of the way. Some purpose in our lives and leisure time doesn’t hurt either.
If we look at the wealth in our country, there is more than enough to go around. Yet we have crises around every single one of those basic needs: Our air and water are polluted; our food is poison; homelessness is staggering; and the upcoming generation Z is the most depressed generation in our history.
I don’t think the solution is to redistribute (another word for steal) wealth because two wrongs don’t make a right. Instead, we need to redesign our economic system to reward effort in a manner that creates true prosperity and empowers individuals to capture the fruits of their labor. This is what gold does.
A gold standard forces markets to behave rationally – at least until human psychology enters the picture. Price valuations wouldn’t be warped so drastically if a single entity no longer had the power to create vast sums of currency out of thin air and purchase assets with it.
For an example of how warped prices have become, look at housing compared to food. The median home price in America is around $430,000 right now, and the average price of beef is around $5.35 per pound. A house is valuable, but it’s not worth 80,000 pounds of beef – I’m sorry, it’s just not.
So, this holiday season, I encourage you to come together with family, friends, and even the “others,” who may believe differently from you but deep down want basically the same things. If you’re not a gold bug like me, let’s talk about fantasy stories, video games, or something else we both love.
Speaking of video games, red and blue are common colors for opposing teams. Red vs. Blue was actually a sci-fi web series based on the popular video game Halo. The two colors are on opposite ends of the light spectrum and provide good visual contrast. However, they fit better in sports than politics.
Red and blue divide where gold may unite us.
