First, what is money?
Second, what is value?
And last, what specifically does money measure? Especially the total amount of money in circulation, not just the individual dollar bill. How much total money is the right amount?
The answers to these questions will separate the economists from the pretenders...
You have not been paying attention. Governments can set the value of their money on whim. They just produce more of it or less of it. They cannot change the value of an ounce of gold in relation to goods and commodities. An ounce of gold would buy a good suit in 1914. An ounce of gold will buy you the equivalent suit in 2002. Gold does not change in value because there are no great increases in quantity due to new methods of synthesisor new fertilizers and there are no substitutes. Gold cannot be counterfeited because the alloy necessary to mimic the color and weight of gold would actualy be worth more than the same amount of gold (gold is heavier than lead, Palladium, etc. are more costly than gold. Gold mining has produced a very steady increase in the amount of gold in the world with 2 minor exceptions. There was actually a gold inflation due to the quantities of the stuff dumped into the system by Spain from the Americas in the 17th century and there was a much smaller inflation due to the California gold rush. But even those events evened out and gold was very little changed in value from say, 1500, to 1900.