
It's not called Fiat currency for no reason. There's lots of rumors of a global switch to state backed crypto coins or purely digital currency. That way the normal people can't hide any money, their money can be turned off unlike cash.
My money can be turned off! Heck no, hard pass on that
The goal is control.
We already have mostly digital currency.
Money is created when a bank creates a loan, by starting with nothing and then splitting that nothing into a credit in one account (the borrower's checking account, usually) and a debit in another (the borrower's loan balance). From there, most transactions are digital where an ACH transfer or similar results in some numbers being subtracted from one account and added to another.
Almost all of this happens on computers, and even before computers it just happened literally on a paper ledger, with paper checks.
You might ask, "wait where does the bank get its money from to be able to allow money to be withdrawn or transferred to another bank?" If the bank doesn't have the liquidity to do so, it can always borrow money from other banks or the government, with the last resort in the United States being the federal reserve banks, who by the way also print all the paper currency. So having that backstop is important for regular banks to have the power to create money, but the actual creation of money happens digitally to begin with, regardless of whether the bank later needs to distribute paper bills or borrow from the federal reserve.
That's not how any of it works though.
It's how all of it works. Money is just balances on double-entry bookkeeping, and the paper currency essentially is a piece of paper that the bearer of that paper is good for moving the balances in that ledger system.
And almost all of those ledgers are now digital.
Republic credits are no good here.
I need something more real.
If you compare it with Gold - against which the USD moved in lockstep until the US left the Gold Standart - it's a lot worse than just a 50% loss since 2013, more like a 65% of value.
The fall is probably the same in terms of real inflation (as actually felt by people in terms of how much less their money buys) - the official inflation figures understate inflation (probably because the mathematical calculation for GDP involves raw GDP being deflated by inflation, so the less the official inflation is the more politicians can harp about how much they made GDP "grow") and this has been going on for decades, which is why a single blue collar salary that used to be enough for a good house, a car and the expenses for a family of 5 in the 60s, now can barelly pay the rent of small appartment in a major city.
which is why a single blue collar salary that used to be enough for a good house, a car and the expenses for a family of 5 in the 60s, now can barelly pay the rent of small appartment in a major city.
Except this isn't remotely true. For American's you had the 62% home ownership in 1960's for much smaller homes (on average 700 sqft) vs 65% now for an average of 2000sqft. The average American family in 1960 owned 1 vehicle, they now own 2. They went on less vacations, moms typically had to work on top of taking care of the family (little to no daycare), oh and interest rates were much higher as well (on top of that pesky women couldn't even own a home by themselves). Single person living was roughly 10% vs 30% now, oh and those hard working dads often didn't live by a year past retirement. And if you were a minority? You absolutely were f'ed.
Yes, costs are higher now relative to income, but demands also are. Want cheap, you move out to rural areas, but risk you don't have work. The same problem that has been endemic in the US since it's inception.
Yes, costs are higher now relative to income, but demands also are.
There is a dangerous underlying logic to this line of reasoning. Treating all technological innovation as an added cost to be borne by the end consumer leads to one inescapable dead end. Yes, sometimes there are actual costs. If so, fine. However, this blanket notion of hedonic price adjustment increases wealth inequality with no end. It isn't a sensible and we should be thankful our ancestors were not so foolish or we'd all be living in trees or caves right now.
62% home ownership in 1960's for much smaller homes (on average 700 sqft) vs 65% now for an average of 2000sqft
62% -> 65% sounds reasonable.
700 sqft on average -> 2000 sqft on average is suspicious though. It's possible stats got skewed by the top 1%, who are today richer than ever before, and own ridiculous amount of property. Median sqft perhaps would be more representative
In all fairness I only saw evidence of that for Great Britain because a journalist of The Guardian actually notice that his daughter's salary and his father's salary were the same when inflation adjusted yet bought way less now, so he wrote an article about it.
I've read things that led me to believe that there is a similar situation in the US but I don't know specifically how far the difference is in the US.
More like the price of gold is artificially inflated far beyond any actual value.
You don't understand what gold is being used for, it's insurance against government printing and is impossible to forge hard to steal if your not stupid and actually pay for security. Its used as the courency for century's for a reason and is often fallen back upon as a last resort for a reason. Silver isn't because it's not as fininite but is good as a more ubiquidous self backed currency for the same reason, just more for the common man.
The reason golds value is so high is because it is the price of combine debts in fiat over all these years, that's why it's so high. When a debt can't be covered in cash, gold is often sold to make up the diffrence, over time that has caused its price to rise due to it being represented against these assets, it seems people can't get enough of the shiny metal.
The alternative view is that the real value of government issued currencies has fallen and Gold just kept going along with its 1.2% yearly inflation due to gold mining.
That the official currencies buy less and less (as I pointed) leans more towards the view that the value of government issued and controller currencies is being inflated away much faster than the value of an ancient currency which is not controlled by any government and only devalues by more of it being mined.
In other words, at medium and long time frames Gold is not an investment asset, it's a store of wealth outside the control of politicians.
If you compare it with bitcoin it's even worse. Both aren't great comparisons, the US left the gold standard so long ago it's not a meaningful comparison.
But that wouldn't be a fair comparison. The prices of gold and dollars are stable. Bitcoin was invented in 2009 and is still in price discovery.
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