Problems every generation. Some just more extreme then others. My standard of living was better in the 70's... my fiat dollar bought more.
Problems every generation. Some just more extreme then others. My standard of living was better in the 70's... my fiat dollar bought more.
We left the gold standard, and no one want to really talk about what that has done to the economy, and the buying power of the dollar. I read somewhere a long time ago that an ounce of gold would buy you a pistol, bullets and a pair of blue jeans. plus a dinner and a bottle of whiskey. I don't know what it buys today. Maybe one of the SSG people knows.
The spot price for gold is about $1200. If you budget $50 each for blue jeans, dinner, ammunition, and whiskey that leaves $1000 for your pistol.
It looks like the value of gold has held up pretty good over the time period we are looking at.
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So it seems that gold is still tracking along the dollar, or the dollar still tracking the value of gold. Now if we could just get wages to track the value of gold things might look better.
It means that the value of gold has remained relatively constant in real terms, but the value of the dollar has changed. The value of the dollar has dropped a lot since 1972.
Getting rising wages in real terms is hard. Most of the time it is just inflation that makes wages look like they are going up. The only option to get rising real wages is higher productivity.
A tree that might take 10 lumberjacks with axes a full day to cut and haul might be done by one man in the same time if he has a chainsaw and a truck. The guy with the chainsaw earns a much higher wage than the guys with axes because he is more productive.
What happens to the other 9 lumberjacks, though?