Americans used to be free to write contracts any way they wanted, but early in the New Deal, contracts calling for payment in gold were declared invalid — another of FDR’s many attacks on freedom.
In this article, Professor George Reisman suggests that with the prospect of serious inflation looming ahead, it’s time to think again about allowing contracting parties to write contracts calling for payment in gold rather than dollars. Congress, he maintains, would need to legislate to ensure that such contracts would be enforceable and not subject to taxation on the apparent dollar profits that would occur if the dollar keeps going down.
Interesting to think about this prospect, but are the politicians who benefit from inflation likely to want to us an escape hatch from their fiscal irresponsibility? I wouldn’t bet on it. More likely, if this were to come up our “representatives” would demonize as “greedy” people who wanted to contract in anything other than dollars.
