I don't know if you're familiar with "total family wealth" or not, but it has nothing to do with gov't land, although if you want to wander over to that subject too then I'm game. I figure if I didn't enjoy chatting with people who's thoughts wandered all over the place, then I got no business messing with the Freerepublic. Then again, maybe this wandering all over the place is getting too sloppy for your tastes too-- if so then this is what we've been working on:
Gold prices surge past $522 level 138 no guarantee of deflation as gold would be mined every year 150 Real wages haven't gone up since 1975. Inflation is just a hidden tax. 210 real per capita disposable income has been consistently making new highs for decades 211 if people were gaining real income, I think they would pay their debt down. 213 from '93 to now, average debt service has gone from 11% disposable income to almost 14%. ...real total family wealth has increased over this same period by more than half.
Taking it from there, IMHO the bottom line (all we need to know about whether dropping the gold standard hurt us) is that American family's real incomes (after correcting for inflation) are and have been growing for decades, just as average family wealth (not including government land-- just the current value of privately held assets) is increasing and has been for a long time. BEA, Census, and BLS links available for the asking.