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Dollar's Purchasing Power Annihilated - The Chart They Don't Want You to See
seeking alpha ^

Posted on 05/10/2009 6:39:42 AM PDT by FromLori

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To: Leisler
So, he started the war a good 3-5 years earlier than he or his Generals wanted.

They ran out of Jews.

41 posted on 05/10/2009 8:19:22 AM PDT by rawcatslyentist (<P><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajsov1M4h50"> Thank You Satan 1:50</a>)
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To: blam

Yes me too I have found some great stuff on that site. Please post them both and I thought this was good

http://www.opednews.com/articles/UN-Treaty-on-Children-s-Ri-by-H-Lewis-Smith-090504-237.html


42 posted on 05/10/2009 8:27:51 AM PDT by FromLori (FromLori)
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To: Crazieman
That chart might be a bit more powerful if it didn't have a 2nd grade math error on it.

1971-2009 is 38 years, not 28. Now I have no idea if the annual rate of decline is correct, and thus have little faith in the rest of it.

43 posted on 05/10/2009 8:41:53 AM PDT by Teacher317
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To: rawcatslyentist

There is a component to inflation that has been missed. The cost of production in the US has increasd enormously in the US since the 1970s. OSHA, EPA, NHTSA and all the other alphabet soup Federal agencies have added their regulations to the cost of doing business. Here’s one example: A company I worked for wanted to encapsulate (build a culvert over) 100 yards of a very small creek so that we could expand the storage yard. Two permits were required, one from the state and another from the Corpse of Engineers. Two environmetal professionals spent a whole month preparing the permit requests. Two engineers making $80k per year at one man-month of labor each and you can get the picture. That happens thousands of times every year across the US. The only recourse is for companies to pass that along to the client.

BTW “corpse” is not a typo, I do that on purpose.


44 posted on 05/10/2009 8:47:46 AM PDT by Pelagius of Asturias
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To: All

All this is really kind of phoney because it is misleading. Yeah, if we were all making 1929 wages it would be serious. The only way to judge one’s economic situation is to calculate how much time one has to work to purchase a cetain good or service. The true cost of goods and services has been declining ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution.


45 posted on 05/10/2009 8:59:24 AM PDT by Pelagius of Asturias
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To: FromLori

This is just silly,
the theory of index numbers shows it is IMPOSSIBLE to correctly measure inflation, the problems get worse as the technological change increases and time frame lengthens.


46 posted on 05/10/2009 9:01:53 AM PDT by genghis
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To: genghis

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article10554.html


47 posted on 05/10/2009 9:10:51 AM PDT by FromLori (FromLori)
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To: Helotes
From the Cleveland Fed, “Economic growth has led to ever higher standards of living over the past 75 years. Average real per capita income in the United States has grown by more than a factor of five since 1929.”

You seem to be missing the point of the thread: If a man earned $45/week in 1929, he would be able to buy 66.8 ounces of gold with one year's gross at $35/ounce. Today, he would need to earn a little over $60,000 to purchase those same 66.8 ounces of gold.

Bottom line: I do not believe per capita income in REAL dollars has increased.

48 posted on 05/10/2009 9:19:59 AM PDT by beancounter13
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To: beancounter13

I get your point, but you need to redo the numbers. Gold was $20 USD/oz in 1929.


49 posted on 05/10/2009 9:24:04 AM PDT by investigateworld ( Abortion stops a beating heart.)
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To: aruanan

Sorry, that is not true. Many people’s pay check has not increased by 1000%. Inflation devalues the pay check and savings. In 1949, my pay was $60.00/week. My wife and I bought a house for $4,000.00, payments $40.00/month. How many people today receive $2,250/week with $1,500/month mortgage payments. That is about the same ratio. Or take $900 for a new car, which we paid. That is roughly 30% of my yearly pay. Take a $35,000 car price today and ratio. Would have earn over $110,000/year and that is close to the same ratio as mortgage example. Or take this example. My wife and I honeymooned in N.Y. City. Weeks bill at a top hotel for 7 days and nights, $70. Today,$3,4, 500/week? Still over $100,000/year. No, inflation has inflicted much damage to this Nation and the purchasing power of most is not even close to 76 years ago.


50 posted on 05/10/2009 9:43:19 AM PDT by mulligan (A)
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To: investigateworld
Thanks for the heads-up. I would also not be surprised if $45/week was a bit high as well. I only referenced the number because it was used to discuss George Bailey's weekly salary in It's a Wonderful Life.

One of my favorite movies!

51 posted on 05/10/2009 9:52:37 AM PDT by beancounter13
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To: Leisler

About the same as it worked in the 1800’s without a central bank. Next question?

BTW, the “steady money supply” was a minor part of the Federal Reserve sales job in 1913. What really sold it was the availability of liquidity to correspondent banks. That has worked fine.


52 posted on 05/10/2009 9:57:20 AM PDT by L,TOWM (Liberals, The Other White Meat)
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To: investigateworld

You can’t eat gold. Or use it for much else than as a trade-token. And its price was not freely traded in 1929 (being a part of the currency, one could not really speculate on gold) so its price was more artificial then than now.

Try wheat, or steel, or gasoline. We can buy a great deal more of any of these with our median incomes than they could in 1929.

Wheat in 1929 was $1.03/bushel
2008 - $5.01


53 posted on 05/10/2009 10:02:50 AM PDT by buwaya
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To: DesertRhino

You may want to rethink what you believe currency actually is. As a medium of exchange, electrons do just fine. And they are a lot easier to carry around then shiny metal.

Here is another part of the puzzle overlooked by the metal fiends. For the first 100 years of this nation’s existence, most of the population was engaged in what we would consider today to be subsistence farming. Once machinery started to increase the worker’s productivity, higher wages could be paid, but the pool of available goods did not always keep pace.

One of the reasons why wages did not go up from 1780 to 1900 was because MOST of the workers economic output (what economists call “productivity”) was about the same at the end of the period as it was at the start. Plus, the pool of avavilable goods to buy was just starting to increase around then, but was roughly the same as in 1780.

Now the TARP issue is a seperate argument and I did not directly speak to that in my discussion of the chart. That money is not really circulating........yet. It MIGHT — see my comment on borrowing and what that does to the money supply. As for whether it was right or wrong, I will offer my opinion — we survived the inflation of 1973 - 1983. I am fairly certain we would not have survived the collapse of the banking system. BTW, it was Bush that got TARP rolling. Obama’s contribution to any future inflation will be Porkulus.


54 posted on 05/10/2009 10:16:08 AM PDT by L,TOWM (Liberals, The Other White Meat)
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To: beancounter13

From the Cleveland Fed, “Economic growth has led to ever higher standards of living over the past 75 years. Average real per capita income in the United States has grown by more than a factor of five since 1929.”
You seem to be missing the point of the thread: If a man earned $45/week in 1929, he would be able to buy 66.8 ounces of gold with one year’s gross at $35/ounce. Today, he would need to earn a little over $60,000 to purchase those same 66.8 ounces of gold.

Bottom line: I do not believe per capita income in REAL dollars has increased.

If all you are going to consider is gold, why don’t I ask you how much an LCD Tv was in 1929?

The Cleveland Fed uses a price level built out of a basket of goods from 1929 to the present. Attack their choices included included in their basket if you want, but the fact is that our standard of living is much improved from 1929.

So it’s no surprise if someone says that inflation adjusted real income has increased over 500%.


55 posted on 05/10/2009 10:26:06 AM PDT by Helotes
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To: L,TOWM

I agree that Bush ran the printing presses too. Electrons are fine for representing transactions of a real curency. But an imaginary value is different.

Heres a question. Where does it stop? Do we follow a never ending spiral of wages and prices forever? 200 years from now, will our kids all earn 5 million a year and live in 10 million dollar houses?? What is the point of it? Economic reality is simply that, a reality largely independent of the money system. Fiat money did not create the goods and services we enjoy as a result of the technological revolution. Increased productivity creates wealth. Fiat currency exploits that wealth for progressive governments and internationalists.

And surely you are not arguing that American farming and industry circa 1910, a few years before the Fed was invented, was about the same productivity as as in the early 1800s? Surely you jest.

The economy has not been created by fiat currency, a bloated US Government has, and also a class of leeches.


56 posted on 05/10/2009 10:44:44 AM PDT by DesertRhino (Dogs earn the title of "man's best friend", Muslims hate dogs,,add that up.)
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To: chuck_the_tv_out
If America had been on the gold standard, the Nazis would currently own Europe <<<

....and if Pearl Harbor wasn't manufactured...we'd all be speaking german....

(I have some mixed views on this too )

57 posted on 05/10/2009 10:45:48 AM PDT by M-cubed (Why is "Greshams Law" a law?)
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To: webschooner
"Those aren’t acronyms, they are ticker symbols."

Heh! I could argue that that is a distinction without much of a difference.

"Go to Yahoo Finance, plug them into “Get Quotes”, then click on “Profile”, and you will find an explanation of what type of investment it is. Charts of the history of the trading price are also there."

But thanks for the info.

58 posted on 05/10/2009 10:57:53 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog ( The Hog of Steel)
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To: L,TOWM

And i could care less about gold *per se*. I love a paper bill just fine, i like an electronic card debiting my account even better. We arent talking about carrying around “shiny metal”.

The argument is when i swipe my debit card, what is the “dollar” coming out of my account? Is it something that Bush can invisibly reduce the value of by 40 cents? Is it fixed against some standard of measure so i can save it for the future without having its value slip away at 4 percent a year, sometimes way more than that?? Can Obama print up a few trillion of them at a whim, invoking supply and demand that reduces the value of mine?


59 posted on 05/10/2009 11:03:41 AM PDT by DesertRhino (Dogs earn the title of "man's best friend", Muslims hate dogs,,add that up.)
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To: DesertRhino
the best analysis I've read is Greenspans 1966 article

http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html

makes sense to me

60 posted on 05/10/2009 11:15:20 AM PDT by M-cubed (Why is "Greshams Law" a law?)
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