you are talking about going back to the gold standard?
Right now there is roughly $2.26 trillion in US currency in circulation worldwide - physical (about 10%) and bank fiat currencies etc.
There isn’t enough gold in existence for the USA to go back to the gold standard.
If you have a gold standard, then the money supply can only expand in line with the gold supply. That means limited money, so money does indeed retain its value better (= less inflation). However, without the ability to create money, it’s hard for an economy to expand. Imagine going to the bank for a mortgage and being told, “sorry, we haven’t discovered any new gold mines this year so we don’t have any money to lend you.”
You can’t go back to a physical standard for currency any more than you can cancel all paper currency and keep it in specie
“There isn’t enough gold in existence for the USA to go back to the gold standard.”
Sure, there is. There always has been. The problem you failed to understand is that the federal reserve system deflated the value of the dollar by 97% since 1913 when the federal reserve system was implemented.
If you took that $2.26 trillion and divided it by 3% it would only be worth $67 billion, as it should be before the massive federal reserve inflation.
It is estimated that approx 200,000 tonnes of gold has been mined.
That is 7 billion ounces or 14 trillion dollars at current prices.
I’m not necessarily an advocate of the gold standard, but it appears doable. A partial like the Swiss is worth looking at.
You’re assuming that it would be backed at the same prior formula. It would be impossible to back it at the prior rate. Plus ther would have to be something done about exchanging for gold/whatever, otherwise everyone would just drain the gold/whatever out of the country. You have to keep whatever its tagged to in stock to keep it backed properly.