Our Threatened Freedom

What Has Happened to Our Money

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 65-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 065

Dictation Name: Vol. E - Part 13 - What Has Happened to Our Money

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] What has happened to our money? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Recently, Richard V. Burgers, an outstanding commodity broker, analyzed very ably what has happened to the dollar. By comparing the dollar of the 1930’s with the 35 dollar an ounce gold standard, and then the 1981 paper dollar and a gold price just below 500 dollars an ounce, some interesting facts come to light.

The 1981 dollar is worth only 1/13th, or 7.7% of the 1930’s dollar. This is a depreciation of 92.3% in the value of the dollar. If we adjust the 1981 commodity prices in terms of this depreciation of the 1981 dollar, to the level of the 1930’s, in gold value, we get the following prices, according to Burgers. Today’s 4 dollar and 40 cents wheat deflates to 34 cents. Copper at 86 cents deflates to 6.6 cents, twenty cents sugar to 1 ½ cents. Cotton from 87 cents to 6 cents, in terms of a gold pegged value. Consider this too, gasoline, instead of a dollar 35 is 10.4 cents a gallon. A four dollar movie ticket would be 31 cents. Gum at 25 cents would be less than 2 cent, and a dollar and a quarter loaf of quality bread would be 9 cents in terms of a 35 dollar gold value.

What can we conclude from all this? Obviously the dollar has inflated. It has lost 92.3% of its value in about fifty years. The real cost of goods has not gone up. Better methods of production have actually cut the real cost of one item after another. If this had not been the case, we would have an even more severe inflation.

What has happened is that the paper dollar has depreciated, and it buys less and less every day. Although we have more paper dollars, we are in trouble because taxes take too many of our dollars. We feel the pinch with the direct taxes, income, property, inheritance, sales and other taxes. This however is only part of the story. Everything we buy has literally hundreds of taxes on it. From the time a cow is sold and its meat reaches the market and your shopping bag, or its hide goes into your shoes or some other purchase, hundreds of taxes hit every stage of the operation, and a very large proportion of the cost goes for hidden taxes. Taxes are like icebergs. Only the tip of a vast giant every shows, most of the iceberg, like most of our taxes, lies below the surface.

However what is happening is visible. Federally created inflation is eating up our national wealth. In the 1930’s we had a depression, but American automobiles, goods and products dominated the world market. Inflation and its erosion of our money has done what the depression could not do. We are no longer the producing power in the world. In one area after another, we are falling behind. Money has been called the life of an economy; a disease of the blood can mean the death of the body politic. Bad money is destroying us, and it is destroying our freedom.

Before it’s too late we must stop the erosion of the dollar and to freedom.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.