Reply To: Article 1 section 8

#14905
derosa8
Member

It is “inherently flawed” if we read our modern interpretation back into the text. However, here is Dr. Woods on the subject:

The power to regulate the value of money does not involve the power to dilute the value of money by inflation, an absurd and self-serving rendering. Regulation of the value of money is a power of declaration and comparison, whereby some monetary standard is compared to other coins in circulation and an exchange rate for these various kinds of currency is established according to the amounts of precious metals (with due allowance for the distinct values of different precious metals) in each. In the common law, “regulate” meant only “the process of properly comparing the coin needing regulat[ion] to the monetary standard, not falsifying that comparison or changing the standard.” . . . That is why this power appears in the same constitutional clause with the power to “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures,” which involves the measurement of fixed standards in order to assure uniformity throughout the country. That power does not give Congress the authority to declare that one-tenth of a pound is now a pound; like the power of regulation, it authorizes Congress merely to take an already existing standard and codify it. [Who Killed the Constitution?, p. 92-93]