What is money? Money is the most marketable commodity that is used to be traded for goods and services. Money is also hard. Hard money does not mean it is hard like a rock, but rather, it is hard to make, or find. That is why gold and silver have been used as money for thousands of years. Because gold and silver are hard to mine, and they can be made into small, portable coins. However, nowadays, gold and silver are too valuable for every day purchases and are too heavy to carry around large amounts of. So the government decided to make paper money backed by gold. Basically, you could trade gold for paper money for gold when you wanted to buy things, but then people started to realize that paper money had the same value as the gold, so they started to trade paper money for goods instead of gold. The government could not print more money without mining more gold, and it worked great! until the government started printing as much money as they wanted without actually mining more gold. This is called inflation. Inflation is when the prices of goods and services go up when the value of your money go down. Have you ever noticed that prices on goods going up? The cause of that is the government printing as much money as they want. Inflation have destroyed entire countries in the past, and I would hate for inflation to be the cause of the destruction of the US.
However important the topic of money is, it is not the topic for this essay. The topic for this essay is ‘Does a national government need to issue its own money in order to secure honest money?’ What is honest money? Well, it is not something I can really explain. I think I can better explain this with an example. So, U. S. money is paper, but it is backed by gold. That is honest money. The money is honest. It has value. Back in Roman times, they used gold coins to buy things, And it worked great, because gold had value because it was rare, and hard to mine. This money worked very well, however, the government decided to try to make more money without actually mining more gold. Romans shaved off little pieces of gold off of the existing gold coins, and melted them down with other metals, like iron, or copper. Now, there are more coins acting as money in the system. These half-gold half-other metals coins are not honest money. Do you get what I’m trying to say? And now, since there are more coins in the Roman money system, people have to mark up prices on everything, making everything more expensive. And since there is less gold in the coins now, from shaving off little pieces of the existing coins making them worth less, and melting those shavings down with other metals to make more coins which have less gold and other metals in them, the coins are worth less. These two problems make the prices of goods and services go up (making more coins out of existing coins), while the worth of the coins are going down (because the coins are no longer one-hundred percent gold and the coins are now smaller because of shaving gold off them meaning they have less gold in them), at the same time! Also, that’s why U. S. coins have ridges on them so people can see if people have been shaving off little pieces of them. The new coins that have pieces of gold shaved off, and the coins that have been melted down with other metals are not honest money. Also, back then, coins were measured by weight, not value. People used scales to weigh the money to figure out how much you could buy. If the coins that had pieces shaved off of them are put back into the system, that coin will not be as heavy as it was before it was shaved, making it worth less. And the metals melted down with the gold from shaved pieces of coins might not be as heavy as gold. So they might be the same size, but they are full of different metals, all different weights depending how much extra metal they put in with the gold. Depending on this, these new coins might be heavier or lighter than the real coins were. So now, there is more money in the system, and the current money is losing value. This is also happening in the America today.
Hopefully you can see what I’m trying to explain to you.
America used to give people paper money worth gold the government had in reserve. They could not print more money without mining more gold. And back then, people traded their paper money with the bank for gold the bank had in reserve to buy things with, but it was not long before people began to realize that the paper money had value, because it basically had the same value as gold, so they started trading that instead. It worked great. Do you understand? They could not print more money without mining more gold. Paper money backed by gold in reserve? Now that is honest money. However, the government began to get greedy, as they all do. They started printing money without mining more gold. They made money out of nothing! When you make money out of nothing, that is fake money. The U. S. A.’s main source of currency (paper money) is fake. It is not honest money. The United States of America’s main source of currency is not honest money. It used to be, but since then, the government got even more greedy, and started printing money out of thin air! The money used to be worth something, but when you make money out of nothing, it is not honest money. It is not real money. It has no legitimacy. Also, it is much harder to mine gold than to print money, so the government thought it would be a good idea to use paper money instead of gold. Big mistake. This just paved the way for future government officials to print money out of nothing. If the government continues to print massive amounts of money every year, the money may soon become worthless. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “How can it be dangerous? If the government prints too much money, people who sell things for money raise the prices for their goods, services and labor. This lowers the purchasing power and value of the money being printed. In fact, if the government prints too much money, the money becomes worthless.“
Does a national government need to issue its own money in order to secure honest money? How does a national government issue its own money? In simple terms, the Federal Reserve prints it, and releases it into the system. But does a national government need to issue its own money in order to secure honest money? What kind of money are we talking about? I will assume that we are talking about American currency. As I just explained, the paper money we as Americans use used to be honest money, paper money backed by gold in reserve. However, the government recently started printing money out of thin air. This makes the money fake. There is no honest money. American paper money is not honest money. So, if the government prints dishonest money, then releases it into the system, then gets some back from taxes and what not, it is still dishonest money. Now, if we are talking about any other government from a different country, it would probably be different. Their money might be honest. But in American currency, the money is not honest, therefore, the national government can not secure honest money because there was no honest money to begin with.
People can also use their own ‘money’. It is called bartering. People used to do it all the time before gold or coins were used as money. People traded one thing for another, just as long as both people were willing to accept it. Why don’t we do this today? Because money gives you a larger market. If you want to trade an apple for an orange, you would not only need to find someone who wants an apple, but also is willing to trade it for an orange. With money, you can sell your apple to anyone who wants an apple, and then spend the newly acquired money to buy an orange. Money widens the market. This is only one reason out of several others of why we use money instead of bartering.
What happens when a national government issues too much money? If there is too much money in the system, then prices can rise and the value of the money decreases, causing inflation. Inflation is when the prices of goods and services go up, while the value of your money goes down. There are some countries that have experienced hyperinflation. The prices of goods and services go up every day, sometimes the prices even double or triple every day! That is what happens when the government prints too much money. And soon, the money becomes worthless, pretty much worth nothing. Did you ever notice how much a penny is worth? It can not buy you anything in today’s world. One hundred years ago, a penny used to be over eighteen times the value today! And with the minimization of inflation, money was worth a lot more than it is today. And the prices of products and services were also a lot lower than they were today. Butter back then was thirty-six cents, eight dollars and seventy-two cents in today’s dollars. The common dollar had much more value one hundred years ago than it now does today.
Does a national government need to issue its own money in order to secure honest money? Honest money in this scenario is paper money backed by gold the Federal Reserve or banks have in reserve. Paper money used to be honest money, when it used to be backed by gold. The government could not print more money without mining more gold. But, lately the government has become greedy and started printing tons of money every year without actually mining more gold. Therefore, the money is now no longer backed by money. Or, money is backed by gold, but an extremely little bit of gold. This makes gold very expensive. The paper money is no longer backed by gold, so it is not honest money. Does the national government need to issue its own money in order to secure honest money? The nation government issues money, and the money we use circles back to the national government when people use it. The national government secures this money, so the national government does need to issue its own money to secure money, but if the money was not honest in the first place, how can it be honest later? The money is no longer backed by gold (if it is then it an incredibly low amount of gold) so it is no longer honest. So the national government does need to issue its own money in order to secure money, but if the money was not honest in the first place, it can not be honest later. The national government can not secure honest money because there was no honest money to begin with.
Can this money become honest again? How I think this is possible, is if the government prints no more money, and they mine more gold. They mine gold until they equal each other. Then the money will be honest. Also, I have heard that one of the reasons the government prints money is because of the ever growing population. However, they are printing too much money, and prices rise. In fact, if they did not print any more money, and the population did grow, people would have to be paid less so they can spread out the rest of the money to the rest of the population, and that actually lowers prices of goods and services. If the population is growing, they do not need to print more money to satisfy the whole population. The money will be spread out across the population so that more people get paid. And with people getting paid less, businesses will lower prices of goods and services to satisfy the population.
Do you know about counterfeiting? Printing money illegally? I am sure you do. But, did you also know that you can counterfeit legally? The government does it all the time. That’s right. The government prints money all the time, and that is also counterfeiting. The government counterfeits all the time. Counterfeiting is basically getting something for nothing. If someone printed money (nothing) and traded that for something (goods and services) they are basically stealing from the people who have the ‘something’. The government prints money out of thin air and uses it to buy things. The government is basically stealing from people using paper as money. Paper has no value. The government prints money out of paper. Now, when paper money was backed by gold, it had value. It was honest money. Now, the government just prints money without mining more gold. They are printing money out of nothing. Paper money is fake. Why do we still use paper money if it is fake? There are laws that say that you are only allowed to use money that is approved by the government, which is the paper money. You are not allowed to use any other type of money.
Were you ever aware that when you use paper money, you are really using fake money? Well now you do. However, did you know that there alternatives to paper money that are not illegal? I have two examples. One: Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the first ever decentralized cryptocurrency. It is digital currency. Now you may be thinking how this is any different than paper money. For one, it is impossible to inflate. Whoever has Bitcoin owns a part of it. You have a say in if someone wants to make a change to it. And to make a change to it, you need the majority vote, which is basically impossible. And the more people who own it, the more valuable it becomes. The second choice is the Goldback. The Goldback is like paper money, but with major differences. Yes, it is physical, you can hold it. However, it is made out of pure gold, also making it impossible to inflate. And because it is made of gold, the vale of it rises with inflation, whereas the paper money’s value decreases with inflation. And you can use it just like you use cash.
Both of these choices are accepted world wide, making them acceptable in several countries. Now, some countries may not accept it, but the U. S. does. And both of these choices are widely better than paper money. A lot better.