Gold.

[SonicG]

[Elihu]

Premium
6 hours ago
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Since 1960, US Productivity has increased by 380%.
A productivity increase of 4X should have led to a 75%
reduction in prices and a massive increase in US living
standards. Unfortunately, the FED has increased the money
supply 76-fold, reducing purchasing power by 99.1%.
Homes are 31 times more expensive compared to 1960
when priced in dollars.

However, if priced in ounces of
gold, housing prices actually decreased by 72%,from
333 ounces ($5600 average price, gold at $36.50) to
just 93 ounces ($370K average price, gold at $4000)

The same is true for cars, tuition, just about every
major expenditure is at least 50% cheaper on a gold
basis than it was in 1960. Central banks have stolen
trillions in wealth and dramatically reduced our
standard of living by diluting the dollar every single
month of every single year.

[Harvey]

Premium
6 hours ago
remove
Since 1960, US Productivity has increased by 380%.
A productivity increase of 4X should have led to a 75%
reduction in prices and a massive increase in US living
standards. Unfortunately, the FED has increased the money
supply 76-fold, reducing purchasing power by 99.1%.
Homes are 31 times more expensive compared to 1960
when priced in dollars.

However, if priced in ounces of
gold, housing prices actually decreased by 72%,from
333 ounces ($5600 average price, gold at $36.50) to
just 93 ounces ($370K average price, gold at $4000)

The same is true for cars, tuition, just about every
major expenditure is at least 50% cheaper on a gold
basis than it was in 1960. Central banks have stolen
trillions in wealth and dramatically reduced our
standard of living by diluting the dollar every single
month of every single year.

Am I missing something? Is the second sum more or less correct but the answer to the first appears to be roughly 154 ounces? Although 333 ounces does have more of a ring to it. In that case, it's a decrease of 39.5% in value, measured in gold.

[Edited to make sense.]

[Elihu]

yeeeeah, i posted someone's fuzzy math, i get 154 too.

the point holds obviously though. everything should be better and cheaper since 1970 and not by a little either. years back sandeep jaitly calculated, and i reposted, that the minimum wage for a full time job in 1970 calculated in gold would have been 184k per year as of sometime in the twenty-oughts or teens, i don't remember, depending whatever the "price" of gold was at the time.. For something as menial as ditch digging! Today's equivalent is probably closing in on a half million or will be soon.

i'm sorry for that incredible hogwash, i was posting in extreme haste. Here are the facts: some numbers

year-----gold--- min wage------ounces------ann $'s-------ounces------golden minimum wage
1970----42------1.45------------.03452--------3,016---------72------------149,364
2015 ---1160----7.25-----------.00625--------15,080-------13------------27,040
today---4000---7.25------------.00181--------15,080-------4--------------7,842

added for newer proper context
how many people do you wish to lift out of poverty?
consider: that three bedroom wood frame house that was 29,000 in 1970, the same house, 50 years older, is what? 150? two hundred K? affordable housing anybody?

The point being, fiat money has filched all the increase in wealth due to increased productivity away! Do you doubt it? It would be interesting to stack up the world's trillionaires and divide that by everybody else on earth needing a 500k annual salary. The numbers are so big that they would all get it and there would be more leftover. If you can believe it. That's how much they've stolen via fiat (lawless) currency.

deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth
-Greenspan 1966

deficit spending of our magnitude is only possible with debt for money. we lose

[Elihu]

i'm hasty and poor with math expression

year-----gold--- min wage------ounces------ann $'s-------ounces------sorry this column did not make any sense
1970----42------1.45------------.03452--------3,016---------72------------
2015 ---1160----7.25-----------.00625--------15,080-------13------------
today---4000---7.25------------.00181--------15,080-------4--------------

the minimum wage in gold ounces has fallen from an annual 72 to 4 ounces. If one could earn 72 ounces like one did in 1970 your minimum wage annual earnings would dollar equate to 72x4000= golden minimum wage today in 2025 $288,000. Lest ye doubt, productivity has quadrupled. prices up, compensation down. you think $288,000 is fancy? the military and fortune 5000's have exploded in exponential value. that's where Greenspan's "confiscation of wealth" is located.

[Elihu]

and drumpfts has the keys

[Harvey]

Hi Elihu, I agreed with the spirit of the original post and was very happy with the general conclusion because it makes intuitive sense, it mirrors my own experience of the last fifty years. I noticed that the ratio looked wrong on the gold per dollars in the 1960's part so I checked the math. I'm always aware that "garbage in = garbage out" so I don't take any assumptions to heart, in this case the quoted prices. But taking those at face value, even 333 ounces seemed too high. Sure enough.

Don't worry though. Your heart is in the right place and the general message holds true. We've been robbed by the owner class for generations if not millenia, even as we drank their war propaganda, their economic propaganda and latterly their literal Koolaid. Don't beat yourself up, just check, and verify and corroborate every single thing you want to take to heart. Always. If so, you'll always be approaching truth.

[Elihu]

why thank you Harvey. personal axes to grind. this issue though, is why we are not free and why we are broke and getting broker. and also why The State over the individual is the cause.