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central planning

Book of Ron Paul


central planning
Higher Education Amendments of 1998
6 May 1998    1998 Ron Paul 49:13
This bill also contains a section authorizing special funding for programs in areas of so-called “national need” as designated by the Secretary of Education. This is little more than central planning, based on the fallacy that omnipotent “experts” can easily determine the correct allocation of education resources. However, basic economies teaches that a bureaucrat in Washington cannot determine “areas of national need.” The only way to know this is through the interaction of students, colleges, employers, and consumers operating in a free-market, where individuals can decide what higher education is deserving of expending additional resources as indicated by employer workplace demand.

central planning
World Financial Markets
1 October 1998    1998 Ron Paul 104:12
Our problems today should not be used to justify a worldwide central bank, as has been proposed. What we need is sound money without the central planning efforts of a Federal Reserve system fixing interest rates and regulating the money supply. Let us give freedom a chance.

central planning
Consumer Protection Legislation
11 March 1999    1999 Ron Paul 19:9
It is, of course, within the constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” However, operating a clearing-house for the subsequent transfer of such property rights in the name of setting a just price or “instilling competition” via “central planning” seems not to be an economically prudent nor justifiable action under this enumerated power. This process is one best reserved to the competitive marketplace.

central planning
Teacher Empowerment Act
20 July 1999    1999 Ron Paul 81:6
Furthermore, this bill requires localities to use a certain percentage of their funds to meet the professional development needs of math and science teachers. As an OB–GYN, I certainly understand the need for quality math and science teachers, however, for Congress to require local education agencies to devote a disproportionate share of resources to one particular group of teachers is a form of central planning — directing resources into those areas valued by the central planners, regardless of the diverse needs of the people. Not every school district in the country has the same demand for math and science teachers. There may be some local school districts that want to devote more resources to English teachers or foreign language instructors. Some local schools districts may even want to devote their resources to provide quality history and civics teachers so they will not produce another generation of constitutionally-illiterate politicians!

central planning
CHALLENGE TO AMERICA: A CURRENT ASSESSMENT OF OUR REPUBLIC —
February 07, 2001    2001 Ron Paul 7:43
Western leaders for most of the 20th Century have come to accept a type of central planning they believe is not burdened by the shortcomings of true socialist-type central planning. Instead of outright government ownership of the means of production, the economy was to be fine-tuned by fixing interest rates (FED Funds Rates), subsidizing credit (Government Sponsored Enterprises), stimulating sluggish segments of the economy (Farming and the Weapons Industry), aiding the sick (Medicaid and Medicare), federally managing education (Department of Education), and many other welfare schemes.

central planning
CHALLENGE TO AMERICA: A CURRENT ASSESSMENT OF OUR REPUBLIC —
February 07, 2001    2001 Ron Paul 7:59
A slumping stock market will also cause the dollar to decline and interest rates to rise. Federal Reserve Board central planning through interest-rate control is not a panacea. It is instead the culprit that produces the business cycle. Government and FED officials have been reassuring the public that no structural problems exists, citing no inflation and a gold price that reassures the world that the dollar is indeed still king.

central planning
Addressing Monetary Problems
22 March 2001    2001 Ron Paul 23:3
It is very clear that we have these cycles and these booms coming from a monetary system that is pure fiat. Fiat money means that the money is created out of thin air, and the characteristic of a fiat monetary system is that you have overspeculation, you have stock market booms, you have stock market crashes, and you have a business cycle. This comes from the mismanagement of money, mainly because man, in his efforts to plan, to have economic central planning through monetary policy, is incapable of providing the information necessary that a free market is supposed to have.

central planning
Legislation To Prohibit The Federal Government From Imposing A “Carry Tax”
17 July 2003    2003 Ron Paul 78:2
Proposals to punish people if their economic behavior meets with the disapproval of government officials form the foundation of the type of central planning which caused so much misery in the last century. The carry tax proposal is obviously incompatible with a free market. This proposal is also a major threat to personal and financial privacy and thus individual liberty. In order to enforce the carry tax, the government would need a means of monitoring how long each piece of currency has been in circulation and how many hands it passed through before coming into the possession of the person on whom the tax is assessed. Thus, enforcing this tax would also give the government the power to monitor the transactions of individual Americans. The Federal Government should not abuse the authority granted it by our current monetary system and legal tender laws as a backdoor means of prying into the private economic transactions of American citizens. That is why my legislation also forbids the Federal Government from placing any information storage capacity on any Federal Reserve notes.

central planning
Paper Money and Tyranny
September 5, 2003    2003 Ron Paul 93:35
There are also many conservatives who do not endorse central economic planning as those on the left do, but nevertheless concede this authority to the Federal Reserve to manipulate the economy through monetary policy. Only a small group of constitutionalists, libertarians, and Austrian free-market economists reject the notion that central planning, through interest-rate and money-supply manipulation, is a productive endeavor.

central planning
Paper Money and Tyranny
September 5, 2003    2003 Ron Paul 93:41
Nearly 100 years ago, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained and predicted the failure of socialism. Without a pricing mechanism, the delicate balance between consumers and producers would be destroyed. Freely fluctuating prices provide vital information to the entrepreneur who is making key decisions on production. Without this information, major mistakes are made. A central planning bureaucrat cannot be a substitute for the law of supply and demand.

central planning
The Television Consumer Freedom Act
24 March 2004    2004 Ron Paul 22:3
It is, of course, within the constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress to “promote the progress of Science and Useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the Exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” However, operating a clearing-house for the subsequent transfer of such property rights in the name of setting a just price or “instilling competition” via “central planning” seems to be neither economically prudent nor justifiable under this enumerated power. This process is one best reserved to the competitive marketplace.

central planning
United States Should Leave World Trade Organization
9 June 2005    2005 Ron Paul 57:11
Now the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a free market think tank, from Auburn, Alabma said, “The World Trade Organization is supposed to be the great apparatus to push the world to greater economic integration. In reality, it was nothing but the resurrection of the old central planning fallacy that the world needs a central authority to manage it. The WTO has ended up politicizing trade by putting the stamp of officialdom on some very bad policy.”

central planning
Gold And The U.S. Dollar
25 April 2006    2006 Ron Paul 23:23
The incentive for central bankers to create new money out of thin air is two-fold. One is to practice central planning through the manipulation of interest rates. The second is to monetize the escalated Federal debt politicians create and thrive on.

central planning
Introducing The Television Consumer Freedom Act
19 September 2007    2007 Ron Paul 91:3
It is, of course, within the constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress to “promote the progress of Science and Useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the Exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” However, operating a clearing-house for the subsequent transfer of such property rights in the name of setting a just price or “instilling competition” via “central planning” seems to be neither economically prudent nor justifiable under this enumerated power. This process is one best reserved to the competitive marketplace.

central planning
UNTITLED
10 December 2008    2008 Ron Paul 73:9
I would have thought that failed experiments with central planning and government control of business that wrought so much harm in the last century would have taught my colleagues the folly of making businesses obey politicians and bureaucrats instead of heeding the wishes of consumers, employees, and stockholders.

Texas Straight Talk


central planning
Greenspan Nominated to a Fourth Term
17 January 2000    Texas Straight Talk 17 January 2000 verse 16 ... Cached
This is not to say that anyone else can do any better than the current chairman in the coming years. Central planning, whether it's in the monetary system or in the economy itself, just doesn't work. The debate should not be over who is best at managing the economy, determining the money supply and knowing the proper interest rates. It should be over whether or not we should have a monetary system that requires its manager to know things he cannot know. Instead of arguing over whether and when interest rates should go up or down, we should debate whether or not market interest rates and commodity money is superior to fiat money in preventing price inflation, recessions and painful periods of unemployment.

central planning
Answering the Middle Class Squeeze
27 March 2000    Texas Straight Talk 27 March 2000 verse 3 ... Cached
Central Planning is the Problem, Not the Solution

central planning
Answering the Middle Class Squeeze
27 March 2000    Texas Straight Talk 27 March 2000 verse 9 ... Cached
In the current instance the diagnoses indicates that the squeeze of the middle class is caused not by low wages, but rather by increased costs resulting from central planning. And the key pillars of our current central-planning regime can be found in tax and monetary policies.

central planning
Answering the Middle Class Squeeze
27 March 2000    Texas Straight Talk 27 March 2000 verse 14 ... Cached
Increases in costs of living are a real problem, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale. Those costs will continue to rise if we allow central planning to continue, but the solution to central planning is freedom, not grant further control over wages to government.

central planning
Don't Blame the Free Market for Energy Shortages
21 May 2001    Texas Straight Talk 21 May 2001 verse 7 ... Cached
Free markets work. Government, not markets or deregulation, causes the economic woes we face today. Free markets insure that supply and demand are evenly matched, preventing shortages. Contrary to the claims of environmentalists, free markets always promote conservation by increasing the price of precious resources as they become scarcer. Advocates of socialist central planning in Washington may claim to have the solutions to energy shortages, but in truth market forces cannot be ignored any more than the laws of physics. Americans who want to continue to enjoy uninterrupted energy supplies should oppose any federal regulation of energy markets.

central planning
More of the Same at the Federal Reserve
28 November 2005    Texas Straight Talk 28 November 2005 verse 8 ... Cached
The fundamental question is whether a central bank can manage the supply of money and credit better than the free market otherwise would. We shouldn't kid ourselves about the true nature of the Fed, which is inherently incompatible with real free market capitalism. Centralized planning of the money supply is a form of economic control that significantly affects prices, wages, and production levels. Remember how market economists once criticized central planning of prices, wages, and production levels in the former Soviet Union?

central planning
Sowing More Big Government with the Farm Bill
01 June 2008    Texas Straight Talk 01 June 2008 verse 5 ... Cached
Free trade helps farmers and consumers much more than this convoluted system of subsidies, surpluses and central planning. Newly opened markets would create increased demand for what we produce. There is absolutely no reason we trade with China , yet not with Cuba . With energy and transportation prices as high as they are, opening up trade with a country as close as Cuba just makes sense. The recent power shift from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul, and the somewhat positive steps he has taken, provides an opportunity to lift the embargo.

Texas Straight Talk from 20 December 1996 to 23 June 2008 (573 editions) are included in this Concordance. Texas Straight Talk after 23 June 2008 is in blog form on Rep. Paul’s Congressional website and is not included in this Concordance.

Remember, not everything in the concordance is Ron Paul’s words. Some things he quoted, and he added some newspaper and magazine articles to the Congressional Record. Check the original speech to see.



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