Wikipedia says no country uses the Gold Standard so I'm inclined to believe it.
Also it looks like there's some confusion over different notions of 'money' being used here. Here's my attempt at explaining it and feel free to call me out on my errors: 'Money' as your average person knows it (i.e. notes and coins) is the monetary base (M0). There are also broader measures of 'Money' which not only include the monetary base, but also the 'promises to pay money' as extra money itself (M1, M2, etc). In fractional reserve banking, no money in the monetary base is created, but since 'promises' can be exchanged just like standard money can it is considered money too and in this sense money is created. This isn't the same thing as making money from nothing, since the creation of this 'money' can only occur when promises are made to repay a concrete amount of M0 money. Whether the system is good at stimulating prosperity and avoiding crises is a matter of opinion, requiring greater scrutiny and separate from any intrinsic problems/evils you assert it has.
hello, national debt.
also, the money from the federal income tax is solely used to pay off the interest charged by the (private) federal reserve bank for printing out all of these new, debt-backed (promise to pay = debt) currency. note i say just the interest, as the government also needs to pay the bank the amount printed.
this private bank holds the nation's reserves, and owns whatever part of the treasury china does not. they make loans to large banks and industry. the members of their board of directors is not public knowledge and they refuse to be publicly audited. they set the interest rates that every other bank has to maintain.
that anyone cannot see that the federal reserve is poison to our economy, and a blight upon our nation, putting us into debt for generations to come is beyond me. the fact that gold is not 35$ an ounce, as it has been throughout history, is almost as astounding as its current price, ~1500$ an ounce.
furthermore, the concept of paper money is not very hard to understand. as is the concept of money itself. but for brevity's sake, let's stick to paper. paper is supposed to represent a "promise to pay" some actual real money (a commodity of value, historically in western culture, as well as much of asia and at least northern africa, gold and other precious metals). here in america, we were on such a "gold standard" since our inception (aside from the fact our dollar, like its spanish namesake is based on a measurement of silver). the paper money most commonly issued were by banks. you brought such paper money into the bank to exchange it for coins and bullion of equal value.
when we switched to a nationwide currency (an action that was vocally objected to, and had been vetoed several times before) our dollars remained redeemable in equal weight of silver and gold till the early 60's i think it was. we even used real silver in our coins (i have a bunch of quarters worth $2-6 based on their silver content alone). if you look at the historical price of gold in dollars, this is when it began to climb the mountain.
i would estimate that this is when the federal reserve had implemented everything granted it when it was formed in 1917.
so, in closing; referring to the historical price in gold, can anyone tell me what use our current system is? we have had crash and crash and crash with the federal reserve. we have been inflated beyond belief. you can begin to describe objects by their atom count using our national debt. i look at the historical price of gold and see that indefinably long line of 35$ an ounce. an economy is built upon its monetary system. so, why do we have what we have?
