Politicians are playing games with your money. I am not just talking about tax dollars but your very ability to bank, save, and transact.
Idaho politicians had the opportunity in past legislative sessions to defend residents’ financial liberties, but they fell short. Today, Idaho still lacks the sound monetary policies to guarantee a stable, constitutional, and free financial system.
This is the first article in a three-part series mapping the sound money landscape in Idaho. We start by illustrating how the Gem State’s apathy for this policy issue leaves all Idahoans vulnerable to tyranny from the federal government and the banking system.
Idahoans are strained by the burden of a financial system designed to support the interests of an increasingly large government. The threats of inflation, debanking, and surveillance work to restrict access to the system, redistribute wealth, and punish political dissidents.
The narrative that inflation is fading is deceptive. Inflation may not be as bad as it was. But this only means prices are rising at a slower pace, not that they’re going down.
The devaluation of the U.S. dollar is causing real pain for Idahoans. One dollar today buys just 81% of what it did just five years ago. Such a loss challenges investments to just break even.
Inflation is redistributive by nature. It takes from those who earned and saved, redistributing to the government’s own priorities. It is a hidden tax with a distributed cost and government-selected winners. Without radical moves in Congress to cut programs and reduce the size of the federal government — thereby reducing spending — the inflationary trend of the dollar is unlikely to change.
In the eyes of the government, picking winners and losers — or gatekeeping — is a feature of the financial system, not a flaw. Gatekeeping is not just about how much money the winners will receive, but whether the losers will have access to money at all.
Debanking — defined as “political and religious discrimination by financial institutions” — is a form of gatekeeping that is commonplace in the modern American financial system. The practice is one of bureaucratic guidance thinly veiled as private business decisions. Conservatives, religious groups, and even crypto and bitcoin users have lost access to their bank accounts under this regime.
The pursuit of control doesn’t end there either. The proposed creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) threatens to allow the federal government to surveil and control your personal financial behavior. Though it is marketed as a way to improve financial access, it entraps users in a system designed to manipulate their spending behavior and precisely regulate their access.
Though these problems are due to federal control, states have a menu of options available to protect their residents. Sound money policy solutions include making physical gold and silver legal tender, holding precious metals in the state reserve, protecting private currencies like Bitcoin, banning CBDCs, and reducing dependency on federal funding.
Though Idaho had several opportunities to implement one or more of these policies over the years, it failed.
Gov. Little recently vetoed legislation that would have granted the state treasurer the option to hold physical gold and silver in the state reserve. This would have reduced the effects of inflation on state assets, saving tax dollars over time.
Yielding to special interests, the Legislature narrowly rejected a bill that would have banned CBDCs and protected the right to hold, mine, and transact in digital assets. This left the state vulnerable to federal moves to implement a CBDC, and it abandons free-market alternatives to an overregulated banking system.
Other moves, like the one to make gold and silver legal tender — as allowed by the U.S. Constitution — stalled in committee without even a hearing. Dependency is still rampant as federal funds are used to balance nearly two-fifths of the state budget.
Many of these sound money policies aren’t new. Several states have implemented CBDC bans, gold and silver legislation, and digital asset or bitcoin protections. We will discuss how other states advanced these key policies in our next piece.
As Idaho stalls in enacting these policies, families struggle to make ends meet. Purchasing daily necessities is more challenging, and saving for financial goals is increasingly out of reach. Quite literally, Idaho cannot afford to neglect sound money policy any longer.
