I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [127]
That kind of instability hurts. We want stability, not instability. We don ’ t want infl ation or defl ation.
Q: As a holder of some dollars, is the value of the dollar starting to depreciate at a rate that is of concern to you?
Steve Forbes: The dollar should never depreciate or appreciate.
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has twelve inches; you don ’ t change that each day. It ’ s a fi xed measure. Same thing with an hour. There are sixty minutes in an hour, it ’ s fi xed. You don ’ t change the number of minutes in an hour each day. The dollar should have a fi xed, basic value. Gold, for all its imperfections, is like a Polaris. It ’ s the best thing we have out there. Experience shows that. Keep the dollar stable in value and then you can focus your energies on more productive things like innovating, starting a business, building a house, being responsible, moving ahead in life.
Q: When the dollar is not pegged to any commodity, when you can just print the paper, what is the result of just expanding the dollar supply on value?
Steve Forbes: If you don ’ t have a currency that is fi xed and has a fi xed measure of value, then the temptation always is to reduce the content. Politicians love to spend and they hate the idea that there ’ s any discipline out there. So without discipline, guess what happens? You get infl ation, you get chaos, you undermine it.
Lenin said the best way to undermine a society is to debauch the currency because not one in a million people understand what is happening. Infl ation is great for those who want terrorism, for those who want totalitarianism, for those who want chaos. That kind of chaos is the enemy of freedom. Stability is the friend of freedom; chaos is the enemy.
Q: Given that, how dangerous is our profl igate spending to creating the infl ation that could create chaos?
Steve Forbes: The spending is not just a monetary issue.
Spending is a moral issue. You ’ re taking money from people and wasting it. People are forced to give money to the government, presumably in return for services. As we said in our Declaration of Independence, people give money in order to secure certain rights. Period. Not to waste on all the other stuff they ’ ve gotten into. And then liberals will say, “ Well, you mean you want to take away Social Security? ” No, we want a system where people own the assets so they truly have something of true value there.
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and built it so the assets are there. They can have a far better, richer retirement than they could if the politicians control their money. This is the way you avoid chaos, by emphasizing we. We do better when matters and money are in the hands of “ we the people, ” and not politicians who have no sense of restraint or discipline.
Q: What do you think is the greatest threat to the stability of the United States at this point?
Steve Forbes: The greatest threat to the stability of the United States is not the kind of murderous fanaticism or terrorism that we see in the world today. Eventually, I believe that we will learn to beat it. It may take time, but we will do it as a free people. The real threat is bad ideas. A lot of bad ideas came out of the Great Depression: that government could be a stabilizer of the economy, and that government could do better than free markets. We ’ re recovering from the devastation of the Great Depression, but bad ideas are always out there.