[DesertRhino]

I dont agree that WWII required a dollar not based on gold. We are talking the value of money. Creating fiat currency doesnt magically make money. It simply makes it easier for the government to take it through devaluing inflation. Taxes could have accomplished anything that inflation did.

Futhermore, say you are correct and im wrong. Couldnt it still have been done as a war emergency? Even if it was the only way to win WWII, why on earth was it required to continue forever?

A high end Colt 1911 .45 cost a little less than 20 dollars in 1912. Today the same pattern gun, Kimber or Colt, will be around 8-900 bucks. The old story is that a 20 dollar gold piece would still buy either. A 20 dollar bill from 1912? You need enough of em to come up with the 8 or 900 bucks requierd today. Heres the point of gold. The pistol still costs the same, the money is losing value.
What will a colt cost in 2112? 50,000 dollars??? Where does this stop? Will we get a Zimbabwean dollar to go with our Kenyan president?

[Leisler]

During WWI Wilson and the then new Fed printed money. I forget what it was called, something like Emergency war script.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

“why on earth was it required to continue forever?”

true, but what about the other point, about the increase in the standard of living?

“We are talking the value of money”

Exactly right, and having gold as the basis of money is inadequate because you are forcing a commodity to an unnatural value. It has a high value per unit mass __as a commodity__ but once you start artificially inflating that value above the real market price, you’ve got a house of cards, because it’s JUST AS MUCH FIAT - you’ve arbitrarily said “this has x value”, which is not really different from paper. To support the current economy you’d have to arbitrarily say “gold is worth $500,000 an ounce”, beyond the commodity value, which is just the same as saying paper is arbitrarily worth something.

America is a lot richer now than it was, so I’m just not convinced that things would have been better, and I can see many reasons why they would have been worse.

[Beagle8U]

“A high end Colt 1911 .45 cost a little less than 20 dollars in 1912. Today the same pattern gun, Kimber or Colt, will be around 8-900 bucks. The old story is that a 20 dollar gold piece would still buy either.”

True, but here is the rest of the story...

In 1912 people earned about a dollar a day. That gun cost 20 days labor.

Not many people today are working for 20 days to earn $850.