DRIGGS, IDAHO – Greetings from our winter mountain hideout! It’s time for another Friday mailbag edition, where I answer the questions you’ve sent in throughout the week…

Today, we cover controversial gold storage solutions… libertarian ideas about public works and taxes… and China’s rise on the global stage – including a discussion with a reader who wrote in that China is living on borrowed time…

Reader comment: Tom, your libertarian idea of not taxing capital gains may be good in theory, but it will never be supported by people for fairness reasons.

A guy works in a factory and his income is taxed; another guy with an inheritance never works a day in his life and pays no tax on his stock gains. Never happen. In fact, if anything, we are headed for a wealth tax.

I can dream! Unfortunately, we’re heading away from freedom, liberty, and small government. I expect you’re right about a wealth tax…

Reader comment: I continue to like your Postcards. And now that you are having a libertarian school for the kids, I hope you remember to tell them about the public roads, schools, hospitals, electrical systems, and all the rest of what we all take for granted, but which make our country doable. Some degree of government is necessary for our benefit. Glad you found the Heartland. Cheers!

We’re reading a book at the moment that argues that the free market can supply public goods like roads, streetlights, and even Social Security better than a government can.

It’s called The Market for Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill. I find it a persuasive argument…

Reader question: Tom, love your emails talking about your family’s adventures. I am glad you had such a lovely summer.

One question: I live in an RV full-time and am getting ready to hit the road for a while, perhaps even into Mexico. I currently keep my gold in my bank’s safe deposit box.

I am not thrilled keeping it there, but I don’t own enough gold to send to vault it with a company. Do you have other suggestions on where to store gold?

Bury it on public lands?

Reader comment: Tom, you, along with some other analysts, sing the praises of China’s modernization and industrial and economic progress. That progress serves its nefarious purposes well. However, for what it’s worth, there’s something you never mention: that China is nothing more than a thuggish police state. Citizens are only “free” if they conform; there is no true liberty.

I’ll spare you details except to remind you that minorities are oppressed, religious practitioners are persecuted, and dissenters are imprisoned or “disappeared.” For brief evidence, observe what has taken place in Hong Kong in recent months, and the ongoing threats toward Taiwan. (True, you’ve been there since I have, but I keep up, being married to a Chinese national.)

I’m not singing China’s praises. Just pointing out facts and trying to see the economic future of the world so we can make good investments and speculations.

Reader comment: I travel to China often. The people are great and I enjoy them immensely. It’s the leadership that the world should be concerned about. The Chinese Communist Party’s censored speech, human rights record, and non-compliance with World Trade Organization accounting standards, etc., cautions one to question the legitimacy of much of its reporting.

Moved a lot of dollars to gold, based on years of reading Bill Bonner’s letters and most recently yours. I can agree with your Dow-to-Gold ratio, but as someone looking at retirement in the next 10 years, the timing is of concern. Wall Street’s warped sense of economic propriety has removed all confidence in honest growth based on fundamental reality.

I wouldn’t want the Chinese Communist Party to govern my town.

Reader comment: Your China-skeptic reader who said China is living on borrowed time is badly misinformed and needs a more rounded view. China’s one party (Chinese Communist Party) gets things done. They have lifted more than 800 million of their rural citizens in abject poverty out of subsistence living. The government didn’t do it with food stamps, but connected the poor villages with roads, built subsidized housing, gave them guidance on what to grow, and how to improve yield based on sound scientific principles. They show the rural poor how to improve their livelihood.

The Harvard Kennedy School (which offers master’s and doctoral degrees in public policy, public administration, etc.) conducted a decade-long, grassroots survey on the Chinese people’s attitude about their government and found that the approval rating has been increasing steadily from low 80% to now over 90% – none of the piddly 30-40% approval rating common in America.

China’s economy is the first to pull out of the COVID-19 pandemic and is now regarded as the engine that will pull the rest of the world from negative growth to the path of recovery. And that includes the U.S. China’s middle class of 400 million is a class of voracious consumers that every business wants to be a part of.

American companies in China now do not want to leave. The revenue and profits they are making more than make up for losses elsewhere in the world. True enough that China does not project power all over the world like the U.S. Nor do they wish to compete in that respect. Instead, they are busy helping the third-world countries build infrastructure, which will help the local economy.

The Chinese leaders understand economic growth is not a zero-sum game, but will raise all boats. Unfortunately, your reader has been reading too much ideological nonsense that’s giving a distorted view of the world.

I agree with most of what you write… except I’m not so sure whether China helps other developing nations or exploits them with predatory loans.

Either way, China is an astonishing place. The level of societal “pull together” in China made me realize America can’t compete with China anymore…

– Tom Dyson

P.S. America is at a tipping point from which it may never recover. Saving your retirement and your family is the single best thing you can do right now. How? Watch this.