It may be of interest to our US readers around our Independence Day holiday to take a look at how one of the chief architects of our country's constitution, Alexander Hamilton, looked at the then proposed federal government's revenue prospects.
Here is a link to Federalist 12.
Unfortunately, it looks like Hamilton was caught up in some sort of gold and silver love triangle that was apparently blinding him:
The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry, and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness...
...The hereditary dominions of the Emperor of Germany contain a great extent of fertile, cultivated, and populous territory, a large proportion of which is situated in mild and luxuriant climates. In some parts of this territory are to be found the best gold and silver mines in Europe. And yet, from the want of the fostering influence of commerce, that monarch can boast but slender revenues.
There are some other perhaps interesting details concerning revenue enforcement...
I must say though, that I find this personally disappointing when I read how Hamilton, whom I've always had a certain, say, 'intellectual' respect for, was caught up in what appears to have been a pervasive use of what he terms "precious metals" as the form of "money" in western civilization at the time he wrote this paper.
Perhaps I'm expecting too much from Hamilton in regards to his then ability to see the potential for a monetary system for the new country that would not be beholden to the authorities represented by certain forms of subterranean matter. In this case Au and Ag, both of which would interestingly go on to appear in column 11 of The Periodic Table of the elements.
Looking at our nation's monetary system that we have in operation today, as it is revealed through MMT, it seems that we as a nation have been able to go on and somehow obtain our independence from the authorities represented by these metallic elements.
Though, there are some in politics currently advocating a return to this previous form of monetary tyranny... stay vigilant.
