Ron Paul Proposes Interesting Salary For Himself As President
GREENVILLE, N.C. -- Long before he discovered Friedrich Hayek and other free-market economists, Ron Paul got a lesson in sound money from his oldest brother, Bill.
It was the height of World War II, and the Paul boys were laying aside quarters from their Pittsburgh Press routes and pooling pennies earned from pulling dirty milk bottles off the line at the family dairy to buy war bonds. One day, Ronnie suggested what was, in retrospect, a rather Keynesian solution: "Why doesn't the government just PRINT this money?"
"Well," Bill responded, "then the money wouldn't have any value."
Bill was 10. Ron was about 7.
Washington bureaucrats, Paul says now, "would like it to be complicated, and that we have to accept this complex monetary system of the Federal Reserve. But it's no more complicated than two little kids talking ..."
It's not complicated, he insists. These are the themes he has been addressing, consistently, since he entered politics in 1974, over the course of 12 terms in Congress, through his third bid for the White House: Free markets are good. The Federal Reserve is evil. The gold standard should be restored. Government is the cause, not the cure, of the nation's troubles.
"If it tries to make us virtuous and it tries to make us better people and fairer people and make us more generous and make sure that nobody's richer than the other person, redistribute your wealth, the ONLY way they can do that is the undermining of our personal liberties," Paul told a raucous crowd of several hundred supporters during a recent "Restore Liberty Rally" at the Greenville Convention Center.
"And that isn't the purpose of government. The purpose of government is exactly the opposite. The purpose of government is to protect our liberties."
At 76, this former obstetrician has seven years on the oldest man ever to take office as president, Ronald Reagan. But where Reagan was the genial conservative, Paul is an evangelical libertarian – a prophet who preaches that the United States is flat broke, foundering under the too-great weight of a bloated bureaucracy and its imperial – albeit generally well-intentioned – foreign interventionism.
This is a man who would eliminate five of the 15 cabinet-level departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior – he has no problem reciting them all); recall American troops from all foreign lands, not just war zones; repeal the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax; reduce his own presidential salary from $400,000 to $39,336 – the median salary of an American worker.
These are not the planks of a mainstream candidate's platform. But Paul rolls along, attracting a hard-core following and collecting millions in contributions.
How does he do it?
Perhaps it is not so complicated: He applies the lessons learned in a life that stretches back to the Depression.
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