My view is that gold used to provide at least some limit on how much governments could inflate the money supply - Yes, it is necessary to extinguish currency, FED open market operations etc.. But politicians are prone to changing the rules. Inflation is a hidden tax on everyone - what we are talking about here is the _unit of account_; we call them dollars. How would you feel if the state re-defined an acre
as one half its former dimensions, citing a "restrictive acre policy, and confiscated 50 per cent of your land? That's what happens. Or, "The meter lost several centimeters in heavy trading against the yard yesterday.."
We don't _need_ to use gold as money, money is an abstraction - bits and bytes these days. But I don't see the discipline by our leaders to make paper money work. It is true that every single paper currency in history has utterly failed, not a very good track record.
Yes, that's true. But inflation did occur under the gold standard. So did deflation.
It is true that every single paper currency in history has utterly failed, not a very good track record.
The dollar hasn't utterly failed.