this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
386 points (98.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43965 readers
2025 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Neither are scams but the UK is fond of permanently doing temporary things. Income tax in the UK was first imposed as a temporary measure to fund the Napoleonic Wars but after Waterloo it was never repealed since it brought in so much. Same sort of deal for the 70 mph national speed limit, it was a temporary measure in the 1960s apparently in response to someone caning it down the motorway in an AC Cobra and as we know, there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
Same thing with the removal of the gold standard. Nixon was supposed to do it temporarily but since it gave ths US the license to print money backed by nothing, why would they bring it back (they could never pay off the gold needed, there's just not enough of it mined in total). And because the US dollar is the world reserve currentcy (meaning every currency can be exchanged for a dollar) and the moment you add in the fact that banks can create money out of thin air by being able to, for example take a deposit of 100, give a loan to someone else for 80, and then there's technically 180 in circulation, however if the depositor decides to take the money back while there are no more money in the bank, the bank needs to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England or whatever the national bank is in this example land.
Pretty sure that's what happens nearly everywhere not specifically the UK.