It's tax time, but what is a dollar?

Off-topic
1

If you’ve read this post of mine and did further research, you may have determined that you are not a taxpayer, but for now let’s assume that you are liable for taxes because of some privileged activity you were involved in, or you otherwise voluntarily choose to become a taxpayer (maybe because to not volunteer means to be subjected to tough prosecution where you are presumed to be a taxpayer and otherwise need to know a lot about the tax laws to overcome this presumption). The income tax is a progressive tax, so the amount you have to pay is very dependent on what the definition of a dollar is.

So, what is a dollar?

The US Constitution, the document that gave the government it’s power, which were given to it by the people, say in Article 1, section 8:

Article 1, section 10:

So, only gold and silver can be used to pay debts and the congress has the power to regulate the value of it. So what has congress set the value of the gold dollar and the silver dollar at? The last time congress set the value was in 1973, Public Law 93–110, 87 Stat. 152. They set the gold dollar at 42.22 dollars per one ounce of gold. So when the United States Code uses the term dollar, such as in the tax code, they are referring to the gold dollar and silver dollar. They even issue a gold coin, that contains one ounce of gold, and they put a face value of fifty dollars on it, a little markup to account for the cost to mint and issue it.

In order to determine my tax liability, I need to convert my income to this official dollar as defined by congress. I can’t just make up my own dollar and use a dollar as defined by someone else, such as the private organization known as the Federal Reserve. Though, if I did and this resulted in overpayment of any tax liability, they probably would not complain.

Money can be anything we agree to use as a medium of exchange. If I produce wheat, you may agree to accept some of my wheat for whatever you produced. While I do accept many easily exchanged forms of money, most of us have chosen to accept Federal Reserve Notes. These notes derive their value because that is the only form of payment our government will accept for taxes. They won’t accept it one for one in exchange for gold or silver, but they will accept it one for one to pay taxes, presumably because they have a contract with the Federal Reserve in which they can instantly exchange it for the gold certificates and other securities that were issued to the Federal Reserve.

However, when you and I transact with this currency, we do so at a very high risk, and therefore, we pay a premium for the transaction. The risk is because the note, like any IOU, is only as good as the entity that backs it. In this case the Federal Reserve, who issues this notes with nothing to back them. The Federal Reserve will not take this note back to be redeemed, except in exchange for another note, just like it (new and crisp). In other words, it’s worthless. It only has value because the US has made legal tender laws saying that they will accept it, but they can change those laws at any time. They may make a law tomorrow that makes the FRN not a legal tender, and therefore, the FRN would become worthless because none of us will be willing to accept it.

The US Treasury’s website confirms this in their FAQ under legal tender. They say:

Naturally, due to this risk, I keep as little federal reserve notes as I can. Instead, I put my money in real tangible assets which have actual value. So for income taxes, I would need to convert my income into the gold or silver dollar. As a hypothetical, let’s say that I earned 50,000 in federal reserve note dollars for 2006, which is a nice round middle class income to use as an example. The price of gold on the free market at the end of 2006 was $636 federal reserve issued dollars per ounce of gold.

Converting this income to gold dollars, we get 3,319 gold dollars of income for 2006. After the standard deduction and all, I’d have no taxable income. Yippee!

2

Will you be able to restart the unicyclist.com server from jail?

3

meh someone can smuggle in a laptop during a conjugal visit :sunglasses:

4

Hmmm… should I go to jail for signing a 1040 form, under penalty of perjury, because I do not fit the legal definition of the individual that form was made for? Or should I go to jail because I am presumed to be a taxpayer and will likely have a difficult time proving to an misinformed jury that I am not liable for any taxes? OK, so they will likely only go after me for one of these things, but it’s still an interesting decision… adhere to the law and you go to jail… or violate the law and stay out of jail.

Give me liberty or give me death… make it your death if you chose death.

5

Tell it to the Judge. Good luck with that.:wink:

6

Yeah, and to pay any fine, I’ll ask them if they take promissory notes.

7

Is there any gold left in Fort Knoxx?

My guess is we could probalby use the vacant space for future NAUCC.

8

where’s the donate gold bars button?

9

Your choice. Immense government inertia makes it somewhat intolerant for some obscure reason. While you’re in prison will you be loaning your unicycles out charitably?

10

I’ll take delivery of gold by e-gold or liberty dollars. I will also accept gold bars in the mail. I’ll also take silver. In fact silver is easier to use as a medium of exchange since it’s a lower value… one ounce will be accepted at many places instead of $20 of that worthless paper stuff.

11

Well, I’ll send you some gold CAD, but that’s just going to be silver USD

12

Cool, you got my address… I am looking forward to having a Canadian Gold Maple Leaf. I don’t have any of those yet.

13

Oooh… I just thought of a new slogan for a bumper sticker.

“Liberty is not a crime.”

Trying to achieve Liberty is the goal, and that means eliminating the Federal Reserve. We are taxed because of the existence of the Federal Reserve. So the question is for the best probability of acheiving Liberty would mean staying out a jail so that you can spread the word about our fascist government and take action to actually change our system. A corrupt court system that follows undue process is not the way to do it as nobody will really be listening.

According to government, there is, but it hasn’t been audited for quite a while now. There is apparently 4,570 tons there, which is about $94 billion worth of gold. The Fed stop reporting the M3 money supply a year ago, but at that time, they have issued over 10 trillion dollars.

14

Debts are valuable too, or else banks would be out of business. It’s perfectly reasonable to trade bits of debt around, as those bits of debt have value. The value is based on the willingness of the other party to accept it as such; the US is extremely good at paying it’s debts, not massively inflating it’s dollar, and the like, so bits of US debt are quite tradeable. They are tradable for services and goods.

Money isn’t on a gold standard anymore because gold’s value can fluctuate erratically. Once upon a time, coins were made of silver; the silver was worth a bit less than the coin’s value. Then they invented the camera, which uses silver in the film. Suddenly the coins were worth more melted down than they were worth as coins, and it got hard to buy things because nobody had change. So they minted the valueless coins instead.

I don’t advise trying to get out of paying taxes. There may be some dodgy bits in the law, but no-one besides other tax-dodgers give a damn about them. You enjoy a lot of services bought by those tax funds and if you don’t pay them, someone less deserving will have to.

15

True, it’s not the debt that’s the problem. If Federal Reserve Notes are issued and backed by the debt, then the value of that note should go up in value with time, because it’s worth something. But we have inflation anyways. It’s the fraud that the Federal Reserve System operates under that is the problem. They operate under something called fractional reserve banking. For each dollar of debt, they might issue 10 dollars, and thereby create 9 dollars out of nothing. Simple supply and demand tells us that the value of our dollar note is not a dollar now. They then allow the member banks to do the same with each dollar deposited in to a checking account, thereby multiply the money supply again. This is what causes inflation.

Dollar prices fluctuate erratically too. I’m sure many of us would love it if our money doubled overnight instead of slowly losing value at 5% each year.

Taxes are slavery. Taxes are theft. Plain and simple. I have no problem paying property taxes to pay for education. I have no problem paying a tax on gasoline to pay for the roads. It’s this income tax. A tax on my labor, that is only used for money redistribution from the people to the bankers who operate the Federal Reserve that I have a problem with. They can steal money faster by making sure the government spends and spends and spends and owes them interest… the biggest way to get the government to spend is to wage war. Putting all ships and the submarines in a single harbor to be wide open for attack and get us in to a world war… the war on a faceless enemy (terrorism)… the war on drugs… the war on poverty (which is created by their theft to begin with)…

Instead of someone else having to foot the bill, we should not be creating the bill to begin with. We need liberty, and we need to restore the constitution.

16

Your bank actually does that too. They always have. We’ve had monetary crises in the past because private banks didn’t bother to limit themself to 90%. They’ve been doing this, by the way, since quite some time before the Independence War.

17

Actually, I’m not going to donate. Not until you allow us 1024x768 animated gifs in our signatures

18

It’s still fraud. If I buy a car and get 10 loans for that vehicle, I would be committing fraud. It’s no different when our government gives a private organization a monopoly on it.

Before the Federal Reserve, there were many goldsmiths and they would all compete. Yes, many goldsmiths realized that people would use the receipts as money in trade and that at any one time only 10% withdrawal would occur, so he would be tempted to issue fake receipts as loans and profit on the interest. It’s counterfeiting and it’s theft. If I didn’t trust the goldsmith to be honest, I would go and exchange my deposit receipts for the actual gold I deposited and everyone else would do the same. This keeps the goldsmith in check.

When the goldsmith issues the counterfeit receipts, he increases the money supply. Simple supply and demand economics shows that when the supply of money is doubled, demand will increase and prices will double. This is theft by the goldsmith, because he receives interest on the fake receipts.

In 1913, the US government gave the Federal Reserve a monopoly on this practice. If you can issue all the money in the country, then you can create money to buy the media, the politicians, etc. “Give me the power to issue a nation’s money; then I do not care who makes the law.” - Anselm Rothschild

 “If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” - Andrew Jackson

“Emitting bills of credit, or the creation of money by private corporations, is what is expressly forbidden by Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.” - U.S. Supreme Court, Craig v. Missouri, 4 Peters 410.

“No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marquee and reprisal; coin money; emit letters of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.” - US Constitution, Article I, Section 10

“The refusal of King George to operate an honest colonial money system which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the Revolution.” - Benjamin Franklin

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. This issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations which already dare to challenge our Government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country” - Thomas Jefferson
As mentioned in the initial post of this thread, the official value of one ounce of gold is $42.22. If that same gold can be bought on the free market today for $642, then the amount of counterfeiting “realized” by the market is 15 times. With the M3 money supply figure no longer being issued by the Fed, the market is left more in the dark, and it’s a sign that something might be about to happen with our money. Possibly the next Great Depression? The Fed targets inflation at about 5%, which is low enough for us not to notice it as much so they can slowly take more of our money. The old analogy is that to cook a live frog, you need to slowly increase the temperature. If it’s increased too fast, the frog will jump out.

Here are some resources:
Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve - Mises Institute - Short general overview
Fiat Empire - A Closer Look at the Federal Reserve
America Freedom to Fascism - Documentary Film, that covers mostly the tax fraud, but also the Fed.

The best movie is the “The Money Masters” (Part 1, Part 2) and it gives an overview of banking throughout history. The same information can be read in the book, “The Creature from Jekyll Island”.

If you are interested in the Tax scam and want a good constitutional overview, this site is the best one: Original Intent : "Restoring the Republic...one Citizen at a time".

19

For a $5 Gold Maple, I’ll think about it.

20

Well, I was wrong, but only partially. After going deeper in to the rabbit hole, the truth is becoming even more painfully obvious.

Anyways, what I was wrong on is that there is no such thing as a “gold dollar” because the very definition of a dollar does not allow it.

Let’s review the pertinent part of the US Constitution again: Article 1, section 8:

There are many terms in that statement that are very important, and all definitions of the words have very specific meanings and can not change with time. The definitions need to be the legal definitions at that time. When you read the Constitution you may also notice some strange use of capitalization. The Founding Fathers were very well educated and had very good usage of the English language, and all capitalizations used in the document are very meaningful. It’s also important to know the reasons of why the Constitution was written and what was happening at the time. Both the earlier Revolution and the crisis resulting in the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation all revolved around money. So all these money issues are very important in the Constitution.

I’ll try to explain what that section means in more layman terms. They can make their own Money, but only in coin form. All coins are subject to being valued, which can be altered (regulated), but has to be based on a fixed Standard defined by the Weight and Measure of the unit they make as their Money. They can also value that of foreign Coins in relation to this unit, based again on it’s Weight and Measures.

Now, the word dollar also appears in the Constitution, and that dollar has a specific meaning as well. It’s a unit of measure. It is mentioned in the Constitution with a specific number of these units. It says the tax on importing a slave is to be 10 dollars. The seventh amendment mentions 20 dollars as the amount that is in controversy for certain rights in suits at common law. Proponents of these sections of the Constitution at the time would have never accepted this if the dollar was not fixed as the congress could easily make 20 dollars something that is excessively expensive and therefore effectively abolishing these two parts of the Constitution.

For the period before the Constitution was made, there was a currency that was very common in the colonies. This was the Spanish milled dollar. With the British currency being pretty limited after the revolution, they used the Spanish dollar as it was the most precise and recognized currency available. The coin blanks were milled so it had a very consistent weight and size. Since this was the currency used and is mentioned in the Constitution, this is the constitutional dollar. Like other units of measure, it can not be redefined. For example, Congress can not go and change the meaning of a year, for if they did they could change it and make their term in office essentially to be eternal. We all know what a year is and congress would only be able to have it scientifically measured to come up with a precise numerical definition.

With the power granted to coin money, the Congress did exactly that in the Coinage Act of 1792. The relevant part of this act is:

Species of the      Section 9.  And be it further enacted, That 
coins to be         there shall be from time to time struck and   
struck.             coined at the said mint, coins of gold,
                    silver, and copper, of the following denomi-
                    nations, values and descriptions, viz. 

Eagles              EAGLES--each to be of the value of ten dollars
                    or units, and to contain two hundred and 
                    forty-seven grains and four eighths of a 
                    grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy 
                    grains of standard gold.

Half Eagles         HALF EAGLES--each to be of the value of five 
                    dollars, and to contain one hundred and 
                    twenty-three grains and six eighths of a 
                    grain of pure, or one hundred and thirty-five
                    grains of standard gold.

Quarter Eagles      QUARTER EAGLES--each to be of the value of 
                    two dollars and a half dollar, and to contain
                    sixty-one grains and seven eighths of a grain
                    of pure, or sixty-seven grains and four 
                    eighths of a grain of standard gold.

Dollars or Units    DOLLARS OR UNITS--each to be of the value of
                    a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now
                    current, and to contain three hundred and 
                    seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts   
                    of a grain of pure, or four hundred and
                    sixteen grains of standard silver.

Half Dollars        HALF DOLLARS--each to be of half the value of
                    the dollar or unit, and to contain one  
                    hundred and eighty-five grains and ten 
                    sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or two
                    hundred and eight grains of standard silver.

Quarter Dollars     QUARTER DOLLAR--each to be of one fourth the
                    value of the dollar or unit, and to contain
                    ninety-two grains and thirteen sixteenth 
                    parts of a grain of pure, or one hundred and
                    four grains of standard silver.

Dismes              DISMES--each to be of the value of one tenth
                    of a dollar or unit, and to contain thirty-
                    seven grains and two sixteenth parts of a 
                    grain of pure, or forty-one grains and three
                    fifths parts of a grain of standard silver.

Half Dismes         HALF DISMES--each to be of the value of one
                    twentieth of a dollar, and to contain 
                    eighteen grains and nine sixteenth parts of a
                    grain of pure, or twenty grains and four 
                    fifths parts of a grain of standard silver.

Cents               CENTS--each to be of the value of the one 
                    hundredth part of a dollar, and to contain
                    eleven penny-weights of copper.

Half Cents          HALF CENTS--each to be of the value of half a
Act of May 8,       a cent, and to contain five penny-weights and
1792.               a half a penny-weight of copper.

Keep in mind that Congress can regulate the value, but they must fix the standard of weight and measures of these coins. Looking at more historical documents show that they measured the Spanish milled dollar to come up with a precise measurement and they choose that it’d be best to use this as the basis so that they could integrate their new currency to the market and easily be exchanged for the same value as the Spanish milled dollar. Therefore, they called their money the dollar since it was identical in weights and measure to it. They defined this dollar to be 371.25 grains of pure silver, or the equivalent silver content in an alloy coin.

In addition to the Dollar, they defined the Eagle for a coin containing a specific amount of gold, and the Cent for a coin containing a specific amount of copper. At the time, the ratio in value between the same weight of gold and silver was 15 to 1. Now the official government ratio is 32.66 to 1, though the market shows it now to be close to 50 to 1.

Today, there is no coin that is being issued that is lawful money. Not even the American Silver Eagle is lawful money. It is legal tender at face value. They have a one once pure silver coin labeled as one dollar, but it actually contains $1.292929 of silver.

There is a reason the US Mint uses $1.292929 as the value per ounce of silver, and $42.22 as the value of one ounce of gold. For silver, that’s the very definition of a dollar. For gold, that is the official value base on the statutory ratio. If you look at the latest reports from the US Treasury and the Mint, you will see that they use these values for their accounting.