Essays in Idleness

One is often accused of living in the past, and I would certainly wish to do so, were the arrow of time not so uncompromising, and its direction set so immovably on “forward.” In heaven, perhaps, we might hope for more lenient arrangements. Down here on earth it appears that we may be run over. There is a certain amount of poetry on this subject, which I enthusiastically recommend, but, as usual, economics cannot help us, and medicine is a sad joke.

There are many other subjects on which to entertain eccentric opinions, but I remain conservative on the arrow of time. I believe it will continue to move forward, down here, and at a constant speed, at least where I find myself located. But there are some other things that we could change, had we the will — in society, as it were. Our allurement to mortal sin is the most spectacular. But one which has not been tried, lately, is the “depreciation” (in fact, appreciation) of our currency. Inflation is prescribed by all the Keynesian economists, whom I loathe, and is smeared (as such gliberals invariably do) with responsibility for the Great Depression. It was entirely innocent, but it would take me at least a book to clear it.

But let us suppose that all Freudians, Marxists, and Darwinists, ideally — and also Hitler and his Nazis — disappeared from our past. Thus especially, let us rewrite 1933, and edit out Roosevelt (who came to power that year), as well as Adolf the Fuehrer. In particular I would eliminate all of the economic policies of both, including FDR’s trashification of the gold standard, with (among others) John Maynard Keynes’s advice.

Have you noticed that gold has not lost its value since then, whereas Keynes is dead?

His argument was that attachment to gold made economic policy inflexible. It is a very evil thing to make policy more flexible for politicians.

One of my amusements, while growing up, was to calculate what the old dollar was worth, and thus what prices would be, from the glory days when it was about a pennyweight (24 grains Troy) of pure gold. (The gold sovereign was 113 grains.) The almighty, or rather inflexible, Dollar, would be worth something more than 150 American dollars today, and of course much more in the rubbish of loonies.

This would shrink your bank account faster than Trudeau did, or Carney will do, but make everything you buy rather cheaper. Indeed, most goods would be depreciating, even while new, rather in the way computers becomes less and less expensive as technology improves. A job only a human can do will tend to hold its value and pay, and might be worth more if the employee actually has merit; one that a machine could do, on automatic, would be automatically going down. Slavery, I assume, would still be illegal; and with inflation becoming a thing of the past, the wage slavery that it makes necessary might also be headed for extinction.

Getting rid of the income tax is among my other desiderata.