A dollar in the United States is a Spanish Milled dollar coin, or its equivalent, in coin form, containing 371.25 grains of fine silver. This is shown in the work, “What is the Dollar in the United States” (online), by Dan Goodman. The dollar was established by the Continental Congress before the adoption of the Constitution. The United States Congress established a mint to coin the dollar. This was done because Spain had depreciated its dollar coin five percent. See Hamilton’s Report on the establishing of a mint (January 28, 1791).

The United States cannot make its obligations a legal tender in payment of private debts. In the case of Julliard v. Greenman, the United States Supreme Court held that: 1) Congress had the power to make its obligations a legal tender in the payment of private debts, and 2) that this power was an implied power under the Constitution based on the case of McCulloch v. State of Maryland. The Court determined that this implied power of making the obligations of the United States a legal tender in payment of private debts was a means (incident) to the power (expressly) given to Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States.

However, the case of McCulloch v. State of Maryland was wrongly decided. The concept of implied powers does not exist in the Constitution. In fact, such a concept, if a doctrine would be in conflict with the doctrine that the Congress is a government of enumerated powers. As such, Congress does not have the power to make its obligations a legal tender in payment of debts, since the concept of implied powers does not exist in the Constitution. Since the power is not granted (expressly) to Congress, the power to make its obligations a legal tender in payment of private debts is not given to Congress under the Constitution of the United States. This is shown in the work, “The United States government does not have the power to make its obligations a legal tender” (online) by Dan Goodman.

As for e-dollars versus physical ones. The M2 money supply is almost 10x greater than the M1 supply (which even that is probably a lot of e-dollars), yet e-dollars trade on par with physical ones. That’s what’s strange to me.

You rent your house – you don’t own it.

What you are seemingly talking about is implementing Proposition 13. It sounds like a good idea, but it’s been implemented in California. Today, if I purchase a house for $600,000 which is identical to a house that was also built in 1960 and purchased for $30,000 – I pay about $7,000 a year in property taxes, but the people that bought the $30,000 house pay $800 a year.

This is why this state sucks now.

To make things worse, the people that bought their house for $30,000 sell it to their kids for $31,000 in a closed market sale. This is making housing unaffordable to technical talent that moves into Silicon Valley, and is killing investment. It also completely prices blue collar workers out of the housing market entirely.

Anyhow – the point of this bill is just allowing a hard currency to exist alongside a fiat currency. Electronic dollars already compete against fiat currencies – there’s many placed that charge a premium to use a credit card or gives discounts for cash.

That pack of gum? 99¢ cash or $10 by credit, debit, or check 🙂

(the following is somewhat tongue-in-cheek)

I wonder how would this affect housing? I’ve never been too keen on my town telling me that the house I own and have no plans on selling is suddenly worth more money making them thus able to increase the amount of money they squeeze from me. Would this bill make housing a competing currency as well?