The Populist Case for the Gold Standard

There have been many calls for reforming the gold standard since the end of the classical gold standard and especially since the end of Bretton Woods. While these calls have somewhat abated in recent years, in this article we will attempt to show that the gold standard is still a superior monetary system, and that the reform of the monetary system is still a desirable policy. We will proceed by first analyzing the shortcomings of the present fiat-money order, indicating how it distorts the market and society through inflation, redistribution, by artificially increasing the importance of financial markets and by hampering U. S. industrial production in international trade. Then we will show these problems would cease to exist under the gold standard, and we will indicate a possible reform for returning to gold in the U. S. Finally, we will argue that such a reform in order to be successful must become a popular crusade-i.e., it must become a populist issue. We do not pretend to any great originality with this proposal, rather it should be seen as an updated and slightly modified version of Mises's proposed reform from the 1950's.