Posted on 07/30/2025 7:15:23 AM PDT by delta7
ran across a 2021 meme the other day that vividly illustrates just how quickly the government is destroying your money.
The meme points out that in 1964, the minimum wage was $1.25, or five quarters. That sounds really low, but keep in mind that before 1965, quarters were 90 percent silver. In 2021, the melt value of those five quarters was $23.34.
In other words, the five quarters a minimum wage worker earned in an hour in 1964 had $23.34 in purchasing power in 2021. There's your "living wage."
That’s pretty staggering in and of itself, but now fast forward a few years. As of today, the melt value of those five quarters is $34.45.
In other words, the value (purchasing power) of those five quarters has increased by another 47.6 percent in just three and a half years!
This reflects the relentless devaluation of U.S. money.
What Happened to Our Money?
Under the Coinage Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, the U.S. Treasury removed all of the silver from dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. Instead, the government mints coins from “composites, with faces of the same alloy used in our 5-cent piece that is bonded to a core of pure copper.”
You will sometimes hear coins minted before 1965 referred to as “junk silver.”
In reality, we should call modern American coins junk.
On Sale Pre-1965 90% Silver QUARTERS ONLY - 0.715 Oz of Silver for Every $1 Face Value Pre-1965 90% Silver QUARTERS ONLY - 0.715 Oz of Silver for Every $1 Face Value Price & Buy Johnson promised that removing silver would have no impact on the value of U.S. coinage, asserting that “[The] Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin."
You'll be shocked to learn he was lying.
Richard Nixon told a similar fib when he severed the last tie between the U.S. dollar and gold. When he announced the closing of the gold window, Nixon said, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promised, “Your dollar will be worth just as much as it is today.”
As we all know, that’s not what happened. The dollar buys a fraction of what it did in 1971, and U.S. quarters minted after 1965 are virtually worthless.
The meme tells the story. We don’t have a wage problem in the U.S. We have a money problem. And it is rapidly getting worse.
This is why you don’t want to hold fiat currency for any amount of time. It is losing value minute by minute….
https://www.coinflation.com/
Here’s the illustration:
Place a silver dollar next to a $1 silver certificate on one side.
Then place a silver dollar (.7734 oz silver) next to 30 $1 FRNs in a stack on the other side.
Each $1 FRN is worth three cents in 1964 money. Simple, elegant.
I have a better example:
A $20 gold coin used to be tradable back and forth with a paper $20 bill.
Today, the $20 gold coin is worth $3,300.00.
Where did your other $3,280 go?
Inflation.
The government stole it by printing money.
Government issues currency. Government causes inflation by creating new dollars and putting them into circulation.
Inflation is all advantage to government, and all disaster to workers and retirees. Inflation turns the value of savings to essentially zero.
Any educated man knows that.
In the time of the Baby Boomers, a guy with a HS diploma could get a good job, buy a house, raise a family of multiple children, and save for a nice retirement. All on one income.
Society decided to change the rules. The money got devalued, manufacturing got off-shored, regulations screwed up real estate (and everything else) and women were told that they had to be just like men and sacrifice everything for a job.
Now we have people with two incomes who can barely make ends meet and have decided that they cannot afford children, and will never buy a house. The American Dream isn’t there for them anymore.
Typical Baby Boomer advice to young people: “Stop buying coffee at Starbucks. If you do that, you can have the American Dream back.”
In 1965 for $100 you could buy 1 oz. of gold and 50 ozs. of silver. What would that cost today?
Kleptocracy.
In 1965 for $100 you could buy 1 oz. of gold and 50 ozs. of silver. What would that cost today?
————
Today, it takes 5,167 US paper dollars…..talk about currency debasement!
“Today, it takes 5,167 US paper dollars…..talk about currency debasement!”
In 2014 you predicted gold would hit $5,000 in 2015.
We are only half way there in today’s dollars.
“”””In the time of the Baby Boomers, a guy with a HS diploma could get a good job, buy a house, raise a family of multiple children, and save for a nice retirement. All on one income.””””
The JFK immigration changes passed in 1965 killed that America, a never ending flow of millions and millions, and millions, and millions, of low bidders for jobs killed the wages and the newcomers drove the Americans out of the workplace with hostility and cold shoulders and language barriers, and employers and homeowners who preferred the more controllable peasant peoples from the 3rd world and Mexico.
By the way, that wasn’t the time of the boomers.
I was referring to the childhoods of people born 1946 to 1964. They grew up in a world where Dad supported his family on his one income. Dad wasn’t a Baby Boomer, but the kids were. Now those kids are about age 70 or so and some of them think the world is the same as it always was. It isn’t. It’s been fundamentally transformed and some folks don’t see it.
I misunderstood you, I thought you were talking about the boomer adulthood.
I lived on minimum wage for about a year in 1974. It was really difficult but I did it.
So today’s dollar is about the equivalent of 2 cents in 1965.
And, this simple point is the one that every talking head needs to use when some crappola “news reporter” whines about how DJTrump has yet to bring prices down “like Biden did”.
People need to be told/reminded that once inflation has taken effect there is no way the price will go down unless: there is deflation, massive increase in supply (which boosts price of all other items on the market), price controls.
Money supply is dynamic.
Bump...
Worrse than I thought.
Melt value is not equivalent to market value, except for the market value of selling the coins themselves. This article is silly.
“We don’t have a spending problem, we have a paying for it problem.” - Chuck Shumer
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