Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Gold Standard, Yes or No?

By defining the dollar as a fixed weight in either gold or silver (but not both, as that creates problems of its own). This way the price of an ounce of silver is always going to be (lets say) $30.00 US, or the price of an ounce of gold is always going to be (let's say) $1,800.00 US, because that's the new definition of a US Dollar (one-eighteen-hundredth of an ounce of gold or one-thirtieth of and ounce of silver). Since the value of the those metals, as measured against a bushel of wheat, a good horse's saddle, a good pair of men's dress shoes, a side of beef, etc., remains fairly stable over the decades (centuries), so does the dollar.

I get what you're saying but I don't know that the US has the power to fix the global market price of gold (without tremendous investments on the open market to manipulate the price). For most of the time we were on the gold standard we were one of the largest producers of gold if not the largest, now we're down to 4th place. Russia and China are ahead of us and produce almost 3 times what we do. Every ounce they produce will devalue our currency unless we buy it on the open market. If we don't buy it we get in the situation where gold in the us sells for $1800/oz and on the open market it sells for $1850/oz. Speculators are going to obtain dollars, trade them in for gold to the us got and then sell the gold on the european or asian markets for a $50 profit with no risk which is pretty quickly going to bankrupt us even worse than we are

Weve been with our fiat system about 50 years. How did we make it until then?

At a fundamental level, you're thinking about it wrong. Once the dollar is defined as a fixed amount of gold or silver, all that a fluctuation in gold or silver value (on the world market) can do is cause a fluctuation in the purchasing power (strength) of the dollar.

Good question, but it has been 87 years officially and longer than that under the table. I am upset but have no recourse over the banks stealing our kids future. We've been suckered in with free printing and distribution of money the same way I sucker in smart independent industrious wild hogs with free corn. Then when it's too late the trap shuts or the bullet hits home.

Under a gold standard, inflation, growth and the financial system are all less stable. There are more recessions, larger swings in consumer prices and more banking crises. When things go wrong in one part of the world, the distress will be transmitted more quickly and completely to others. Dec 19, 2016
Why a gold standard is a very bad idea — Money, Banking ...
www.moneyandbanking.com

I might write an article on why living on credit and using other people's money is a really bad idea.

Ironic,


All this talk of gold,
Comes back to its value,
In $$$.

Our money is fine.
Because we have always been fine. Stable. Solvent. Productive.


That's changing, unfortunately.


How you count your wealth is going to be one of
your smaller problems when your country disintegrates.
That, is our bigger problem right now.
Gold notes aren't going to hold this thing together.
It's the people, and today's people aren't interested in U.S. (us?)
just me!

www.theatlantic.com Business Why the Gold Standard Is the World's Worst Economic Idea...Matthew O'Brien August 26, 2012

The greatest trick Ron Paul ever pulled was convincing the world that the gold standard leads to stable prices.

Well, maybe not the world. Just the Republican Party. After a 32-year hiatus, the party's official platform will include a plank calling for a commission to look at the possible return of the gold standard. There might be worse ideas than this, but they generally involve jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge because everybody else is doing it.

Economics is often a contentious subject, but economists agree about the gold standard -- it is a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history. As University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler points out, exactly zero economists endorsed the idea in a recent poll. What makes it such an idea non grata? It prevents the central bank from fighting recessions by outsourcing monetary policy decisions to how much gold we have -- which, in turn, depends on our trade balance and on how much of the shiny rock we can dig up. When we peg the dollar to gold we have to raise interest rates when gold is scarce, regardless of the state of the economy. This policy inflexibility was the major cause of the Great Depression, as governments were forced to tighten policy at the worst possible moment. It's no coincidence that the sooner a country abandoned the gold standard, the sooner it began recovering.

When we were on the gold standard. 1 oz of gold in 1800 was worth $20. 1 oz of gold or $20 would buy you a two suits. In 1900 1 oz of gold was worth $20 and again, both would buy two suits.

Then sometime around 1912 Wilson created the Federal Reserve, thus the downfall of the dollar via inflation. In 2000 1 oz of gold could still buy you two suits, however with inflation, $20 would only buy you the socks.

Gold kept it's constant value, but fiat money not backed by gold, rose over time with inflation.

See the difference. During the 1800's a $20 gold piece was one ounce and kept it's value. This was also true with the silver dollar, which today is worth about $30+ dollars.

Pennies made before 1980 are worth about 2 cents in metal with today's prices. Nickles made before 2010 are worth about 8 cents in todays prices. Kennedy dollars made after 1964 are worth about $3 in metal.

Wonder why there is a shortage of change. Preppers know this and are saving their old change. Paper money can become worthless, coins will not, especially some coins with silver, gold, and copper in them.

We should go back on the gold standard, but peg what we have in reserve to what is already printed and freeze it. With fiat money and the Federal Reserve, the government can release more money into the system by paying debt off with inflated dollars. Prices will keep rising, like they did in the 1970's when Nixon got completely off the gold standard. We were only partially on it still after 1912, but got completely off in the 1970's.

Ammo and food may be the barter currency in the next few years if they do away with money and make it all electronic via cards and chips. Buy it cheap and stack it deep.

Yep.

After the conquistadors returned from the new world with ship loads of gold Spanish experienced 500% inflation.

Not exactly the symptoms of a stable money supply.

You can't.

That's why no nation is on a true gold standard.

No, we wouldn't have. Gresham's law. Cheap money drives out good money. That's why duel monetary systems don't work.

The world was forced off it when Nixon defaulted on the United State's obligations to tender gold for US Dollars. The nations of the world had backed all their currencies on the US Dollar, which we promised to keep as good as gold, because we had promised it would remain backed by gold.

Your dates are cherry picked. There were many wild fluctuation in assets values between 1800 and 1900.

And he took us off for the exact reasons in the above post.

that's it exactly. they among others have taught us how. i hope i've done gone on to the big reward before it happens here though.

Which is why the US should simply follow the US Constitution and not issue paper notes at all, but only mint gold and silver coins. The dollar, however, should be fixed to one or the other, not both. They can mint both, but fix the dollar to one and not both, and allow people to contract for either payment in silver or gold coins.

If private banks choose to issue gold and silver notes, hold them accountable for fraud when they issue more notes than they have gold or silver to back them.

If they would have hung the Federal Reserve bankers 87 years ago justice would have been served and defrauding the citizenry would have stopped. We are going to pay a terrible price for this fiat money system. Actually in a way we already have with our military adventures that have caused so much misery and death to our own citizens and abroad, with no benefit to anyone but the bankers.

Yep.