A better question is whether or not we're better off than we were in 1971 when Nixon dropped the gold standard. I'd say the answer is an unqualified 'no' at this point, especially for the bottom 90%.
We shouldn’t mix cause & effect though. Those graphs are predicated on the idea that “gold holds its value not matter what”.
That is true, *except* when a huge country like the US makes a decision about currency backing. As I discussed above, backing artificially raises the price of gold, and likewise, removing the backing drops the price of gold back down.
So those graphs can be interpreted as the drop in gold price, in real terms - how much other of all other commodies an ounce could buy - immediately after 1971, then things getting substantially better.
Then the third part of those graphs is the drop after 2000, which clearly represents the rise in gold price.
In some ways we’re definitely not better off than we were 80 years ago. Now it seems that for many families, both man and wife have to work just to stand still, where previously just the man working was enough. But is that just because of their unneccessary trappings?
I don’t mean to be the anti-goldbug. If I had money to invest a sizeable portion of it would be in metals. But I would like people who have their whole nest egg in gold to step back from gold madness that makes them cheer when the dollar falls and think that $100k gold would be perfectly reasonable.