Hey, JC (if I may)! Welcome to a wonderful journey into the heartlessness of Austrian Economics! (technically, it is value-free)
I will take some of the points in the review and refute them and then present you with some nice links.
In the late 1800s, Paul’s policies of a gold standard, minimal business regulation, no income tax, and no Federal Reserve were in place.
Careful with the “minimal business regulation” stuff in there. This is false. There was plenty of regulation. Furthermore, there was tons of other interference in the market (outside of regulation) in the form of subsidies/government policies that help business.
By beginning like this, the reviewer belies a basic misunderstanding of the Gilded Age. It’s a nice fallacy to believe in that the Gilded Age was laissez-faire. In fact, it was not. While there were some free market aspects which helped to raise the US out of subsistence farming, the big robber barons were the ones who used government power.
Here are some articles to begin debunking the idea of the laissez-faire Gilded Age:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-gilded-age-a-modest-revision/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/no-laissez-faire-there/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/departments/it-just-aint-so-5/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-robber-barons-and-the-real-gilded-age/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-many-monopolies/
That should get you started.
Next, debunk the idea of the evil Standard Oil monopoly: https://wiki.freecapitalists.org/wiki/Standard_Oil (I will soon expand on this article even more)
Afterwards, note that the popular example of meatpacking as market failure is no more than a myth: https://wiki.freecapitalists.org/wiki/Meat_packing
For more example of how government in fact was always helping big business, see Gabriel Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservativism. (he’s a socialist)
A nice quick article to read about Big Business loving regulation is this one: http://www.cato.org/research/articles/cpr28n4-1.html
Alright, now that we’ve got that down…
They often worked 96 hour weeks in dangerous conditions with hazardous substances (15,000 on-the-job deaths per year).
Yet they chose this voluntarily over the alternative - backbreaking farm labor. People need to snap out of the idea that the time before the Industrial Revolution was all ice cream and roses. No. Subsistence farming isn’t cool. It’s tough. Really tough. And dangerous. And you don’t make much money or food. You need many children for it and these children need to get used to tough farm labor. This brings me to my next point,
Yet their children went hungry (many of them worked too).
In fact, child labor helped to decrease hunger by adding additional sources of revenue for families. See this thread for more info on child labor: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/child-labor-laws/21306
The desperate workers often went on strike, despite government militias and company-hired killers frequently taking strikers’ live
Sounds not-very-free-market to me. Killing people who are peaceful? Yeah, that doesn’t sounds like “protecting property rights.” Also, the unions themselves often got quite violent.
Ron Paul avoids addressing the sufferings of this era and fails to demonstrate how his policies will bring about a totally different result for the working class this time around.
A totally different result? Why would you want that? The Industrial Revolution was one of the most magnificent times in the history of man. It brought the people out of poverty by greatly increasing their productivity. This is merely propaganda he’s repeating.
Looks like Dr. Paul missed the first day of his Econ 101 class. Inflation hurts the wealthy the most - i.e., a $100 million inheritance only buys $50 million worth of stuff 18 years later. On the other hand, those who earn too little to save (which is more than half the U.S. population) have no such concern, but will find a mortgage easier to pay as years go by. Of course, as usual, Paul fails to walk us through how his inverted view of reality actually plays out.
He neglects the fact that the rich (or more precisely, some of the rich) get gigantic loans before inflation kicks in. And remember, Paul says “middle class”. The middle class is not “too poor to save.” That’s ridiculous.
Which New Deal 1930’s programs forced banks to make such bad business decisions? Paul, as usual, fails to divulge. Apparently, he thinks if he makes something up, that makes it true.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae ?
Paul hates all regulation, even anti-fraud regulation. He prefers that people be powerless against corporate predators - all in the name of “liberty.”
I… don’t think so…
No thanks, Ron. Let’s keep our money safe with the FDIC.
Can you say “moral hazard” three times fast?
a national plan to get through the famine
Uhm, sort of like the government destroying crops during the GD while people were starving?