this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
117 points (100.0% liked)

Antiwork

4836 readers
202 users here now

Date Created: June 21, 2023

This community supports labor, with an aspiration for it to cease to be required to live our lives. Members of this community want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and/or want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.

Anti-Work Library 📚
Essential Reads

Start here! Some of the more talked-about essays on the topic.

c/Antiwork Rules

Tap or click to expand

1. Server Main Rules

The main rules of the server will be enforced stringently. https://lemmy.world/

2. No spam or reposts + limit off topic comments

Spamming posts will be removed. Reposts will be removed with the exception of a repost becoming the main hub for discussion on that topic.

Off topic comments that do not pertain to the post at hand may be removed if it is deemed they contribute nothing and/or foster hostility at users. This mostly applies to political and religious debate, but can be applied to other things at the mod’s discretion.

3. Post must have Antiwork/ Work Reform explicitly involved

Post must have Antiwork/Work Reform explicitly involved in some capacity. This can be talking about antiwork, work reform, laws, and ext.

4. Educate don’t attack

No mocking, demeaning, flamebaiting, purposeful antagonizing, trolling, hateful language, false accusation or allegation, or backseat moderating is allowed. Don’t resort to ad hominem attacks against another user or insult other people, examples of violations would be going after the person rather than the stance they take.

If we feel the comment is uncalled for we will remove it. Stay civil and there won’t be problems.

5. No Advertising

Under no circumstance are you allowed to promote or advertise any product or service

6. No factually misleading information

Content that makes claims or implications that can be proven false or misleading will be removed.

7. Headlines

If the title of the post isn’t an original title of the article then the first thing in the body of the post should be an original title written in this format “Original title: {title here}”.

8. Staff Discretion

Staff can take disciplinary action on offenses not listed in the rules when a community member's actions or general conduct creates a negative experience for another player and/or the community.

It is impossible to list every example or variation of the rules. It is also impossible to word everything perfectly. Players are expected to understand the intent of the rules and not attempt to "toe the line" or use loopholes to get around the intent of the rule.

9. No posting links to Twitter/X or Meta owned properties

Social Media products such as Twitter/X and Meta Properties (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Threads) are known low quality information sources - they actively spread misinformation without sufficient moderation, hate speech. These platforms each have billionaire owners working actively to eliminate labor protections through direct action, lobbying, performative large scale layoffs and attacks on institutions that enforce labor law.

You are not encouraged to do so, but you may post screenshots from these sites IF THE INFORMATION IS NOT AVAILABLE ON ANOTHER VALID PLATFORM. Screenshots must include info to support a relevant conversation within this community and must show a VISIBLE time/date stamp for posterity. If you are caught manipulating content of a screenshot, your post will be removed and you will receive an indefinite ban from this community at the discretion of the moderator(s)

No pass through/archive services are allowed as they potentially feed traffic back to these services, directly or indirectly (e.g. Services like Xcancel or Nitter)

Antiwork Suggested Communities

c/[email protected]

Server status for big servers http://lemmy-status.org/

Active stats from all Antiwork instances

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
117
The price of gold (the true measure of inflation) at all time high (www.usatoday.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
61 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This is always a contentious topic. I am Always met with resistance to my main arguments. So without further adieu let us delve into why this is aweful and will only get worse. I see gold hitting $3500-4000 by the end of this cunt’s second term. His first term saw the largest growth of gold price / decrease in usd value of any sitting POTUS from $1200 to just over $2000 which is a 66% fluctuation whereas with biden it went from $2000 to $2700 which is 35% increase.

Anyway lets get into this. For the first 172 years of the history of the USD as a standardized currency the price of gold held strong only increasing ≈85% from $19 to $35. But since 1971 when nixon ended the gold standard the price has ballooned ≈8000% from $35 to $2800 today.

Gold has always been considered an inflation proof asset. It retains its value better than any other commodity subject to the rules of supply and demand markets. Gold was the first currency used outside of traditional barter and trade economics and its value is still intrinsically tied to the value of every circulating currency in existence. If you calculate the exchange rate between any two currencies you’ll quickly see that they all add up to good perfectly. But that’s basic and should go without saying.

Ever wonder why at the time of American history portrayed as the era of American working class prosperity (the mid forties till the mid seventies) one working adult making minimum wage could afford to raise a family of four with enough surplus to send their two children to college, save for retirement (if they weren’t part of the 50% of workers that had a pension around this time) and go on a modest yearly family vacation? Meanwhile today even a family with only one kid is struggling to make it by on two salaries totaling $100,000 after taxes?

Now this may just be conjecture on my part but I believe the reason for this massive flip in working class power dynamics over the lasy 54 years was intentional. Sometime after Kennedy was assassinated wall street corporate interest had for all intents and purposes captured our political process and instructed their employees (our alleged representatives) to enact legislation that would effectively eradicate all the progress made by the labor and civil rights movements of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s as well as FDR’s new deal policies which stood as a foundation for the progress that came after. They were successful meanwhile the corporate executive class adequately adjusted their compensation to counteract the intended results of these policies.

In 1938 after conservative policies had been doubled down on which led to the gilded age and left us with the great depression. FDR finally began to repair the damage with common sense fixes that the robber barrons had fought at every opportunity available. 1938 is when the fair labor standards act was passed. This legislated many common sense socialist protections for workers protecting them from ruthless exploitation by profits at all cost models of capitalism. Such as; child labor laws, federal holidays, weekends, the 40 hour 5 day work week and most importantly, minimum wage.

Minimum wage on a federal level in the 87 years since its introduction has been adjusted 22 times with most adjustments occurring within a year of the previous one. Today the last adjustment of federal minimum wage was 16 years ago. And for the 30 year period of 1938 to 1968 7 adjustments were passed after first being set at 25¢ per hour or 14.9 ounces of gold per year at a full time schedule($41,000 today or about $19.50/hour) The 3 most impactful adjustments were in 1950, 1956 and 1968 where minimum wage was respectively raised to 75¢, $1 and finally $1.60 per hour. St the time that ranged from 45 ,60 and 95 ounces of gold annually.

Today the highest minimum wage in the country of $20/hour for some California fast food workers barely produces more than 15 ounces of gold for a full time year of work. And federal minimum wage is approximately 5.5 ounces. So thats a loss in value of 94-85%

And here many people will try to convince you that “the price of gold isn’t an accurate measurement for inflation statistics” but this is incorrect. But go ahead and believe the world bank, international monetary fund and Wall Street’s cooked books. These institutions have no issue committing fraud and them footing the bill to the rest of the world but sure lets pretend they are telling us the truth about something so important as how badly the socio political and socioeconomic policies they’ve supported the last 5-6 decades have brought the rest of the world as well as america into a state of austerity for the working class while they put around in their new yachts supercars and private jets that burn anywhere from $7,000 to $40,000 worth of fuel per trip. They definitely seem credible 🥴

But anyway lets look at the basis of their inflation models. The inflation models peddled by these fine and proper institutions snd definitely not rotting fraud filled pus buckets of society. They are based almost entirely upon a metric known as “consumer price index” or CPI. And cpi is flawed for several reasons but the biggest of those is that CPI does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply. Such as what happens when a governing body prints money out of thin air and increases the national debt over 50 times in the last 6 decades. Now if we contrast cpi to the price of gold we will see where cpi fails is where gold excells. The main driving point in gold’s price increase is economic worry caused by poor policy the most common of which being irresponsible and unrestrained Fiat currency printing. Now lets look at currency printing in the last 54 years. There are plotted graphs that solidify my point and you’re free to look them up. Now by the end of 1979 the price of gold had alrrady increased by 2000% to just over $700 and in less than 2 years by 1981 the US had finished printing the first one trillion dollars into circulation adding to the national debt substantially. Fast forward today and the last i checked the us debt was somewhere around 36 trillion dollars and we currently print one trillion dollars every 3 to 4 months which is driving the price of gold through the roof due to decreasing USD value and market worry about the stability of the US dollar in modern times.

So why could someone working a minimum wage job from 1945 up until the mid 70’s support a family of four? Because money was worth far more and leftist organizing held the feet of the wealthy legacy families in wall street to the flames (these fsmilies all had supported Hitler so blatantly in the 1930’s they held a rally for him at madison square garden and made him person of the year on Times magazine’s cover in 1938) lets do some math here. To earn equal value to 1950’s minimum wage you would need to make the equivalent of 45 ounces of gold which today is worth $126,000 or $60.57 per hour. In 1956 it was 60 ounces or $168,000/ $80.76 then for 3 years before nixon shock was put in motion by withdrawing from the bretton woods agreement, arguably the worst financial policy the us has ever made, us minimum wage peaked at $1.60 which produced 95 ounces of gold or $266,000 or $127.88/hour.

To come anywhere near this both adults need to work 80 hours a week with overtime at a base pay of $20 just to reach $208,000 before taxes. And yes you can live better than a majority of people on thst wage and even $120,000/yr is decent but with 4 kids good luck saving anything meaningful and living anywhere but highly undesirable urban areas in super red states.

So these are facts that i know at least several will comment to debunk on this post. But the facts I’ve mentioned remain. None more so telling than the reality that the rich who are well versed in the markets of investment banking, have always considered gold to be an inflation proof asset that is not just a status symbol or a usefull material for technological applications but also a store of wealth in chaotic economic times.

anyone saying or asking why would they lie to us about this? I mean, are you not paying attention? If they told us the truth, that someone making quadruple federal minimum wage today is making 20% of minimum wage just 54 years ago then people would see the root of their economic frustrations in life and be much closer to starting the class warfare our society so desperately needs.i and others before me who have done the math have also figured out that the minimum wage workers of today are payed less than it cost to purchase and maintain enslaved people under chattel slavery. But since we have this illusory sense of choice, that we could just quit at anytime we are delusional to believe in our freedom under democracy (which is in reality class dictatorship) so from 1950 till today the share of wealth has gone from the top 20% having 10% of the wealth to the top ten percent having 66% and the top 20 having 74% while the bottom 60% have less than the 3 wealthiest men who collectively control $1,000,000,000,000 in assets.

The American working class have been robbed before their very eyes to the point where we are just glorified slaves. Many millennials snd gen z will have to work till we are to sick to do so or have to clock in on the day we expire. Many will never own a home snd have to hope that social security isn’t completely gutted in the next 25-50 years but i am not hopeful.

Have a good weekend regardless. Plan a boycott and some strikes and lets at least try and make things better than they are as dauntingly impossible as it may seem

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Typically more people will buy into your point, or at least give you the time to consider, if you don't have a typo in the title...

I'm going to leave this up for now, but please keep discussion to Antiwork relevant impact on wage value and potential impacts to the working class.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It was late and i was pretty much passing out when I wrapped this up. Thanks for the proof reading comrade.

Also this is relevant. Knowing how severely our currency has been intentionally devalued is an important thing to understand. If people knew that minimum wage has decreased in value from 84-94% i have a hunch that more people would be far less willing to participate in wage slavery than the current number of those who continue to participate despite the decreasing returns.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's bravely hopeful of a gen pop that resembles Wall-E's bait-fed leftovers more and more every year.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think thats also a result of nixon shock policies. Namely the cutting of education funding and standards that was doubled down by Reagan under the influence of advisor Roger A Freeman who is quoted as saying that an educated proletariat was a real threat to the society they were working to create. Leftism was far more popular in the 60’s and 70’s as a result of the higher education standards we had after the end of the second world war. Then leftism was smothered in the 80’s and 90’s and now what many people consider “left” is just right leaning centrist neo liberalism. True leftism has pretty much been wiped from the chat since then.

Today education centers are just there to condition workers to be smart enough to run the machines that generate profit for those with capital but not smart enough to understand how ruthlessly exploited they are. After Reagan the working class in the US were turned into low paid service industry wage slaves almost overnight after Reagan’s cafta turned to nafta under clinton and all the high paying manufacturing jobs that gave many Americans an unprecedented amount of prosperity/ quality of life were sent to the third world so corporations could reduce labor costs by 90-95%+ all while our currency was being intentionally devalued to reduce labor costs to all the jobs that couldn’t be outsourced to the third world

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

So I agree with a lot of what you say about the dismantling of the US state and unravelling of labour protections, and failures around minimum wage.

However i think you're overestimating the accuracy of gold as a measure or inflation or as a currency. The price of gold was effectively heavily regulated up until 1971 due to the gold standard / bretton woods system.

After the gold standard was dropped, gold no longer reflects the value of money and instead reflects the supply and demand of gold.

Gold is invested in because its seen as a safe harbour investment, and also paradoxically because its value keeps going up (so to an extent it is also a speculative investment). There are also many more people investing in gold now while the supply hasn't changed as much.

A large part of the value of gold reflects the supply and demand of gold itself, rather than a pure measure of inflation. Inflation is definitely a factor in the relative price of gold to the dollar, but its not the only factor in its price and value.

So I think a lot of what you said has merit but I think youre over relying on the value of gold as a metric of inflation - there are lots of other factors impacting its value and it's not an accurate surrogate measure for inflation.

Minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, although measuring it against the price of gold is inaccurate as the price of gold has diverged more in value than just inflation; its actual value has gone up due to supply and demand, including ephemeral demand like people seeing it as a good investment in its own right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I do not believe it is true that once the gold standard ended that severed the relationship between the value of gold and the value of currency. Printed paper money is valueless. The only thing that gives it value is our faith in markets and those who control them. It is merely fiat currency and its value only exists because of fiat or by decree of those in power. Since we live in a class dictatorship it is difficult for many to see this because so many are blind and continue to trust the social institutions that are actively defrauding and undermining them.

As i said above Gold was the first currency ever used. At any time in history an ounce of gold can purchase the buyer a fine set of garments (a 3 piece suit with undergarments, a button down shirt and leather shoes or a nice evening dress suitable to wear at a fancy restaurant or an upper scale wedding) one months rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in a decent area. And those who have examined the value of money back in biblical times specifically by examining the Sumerian cuneiform tablets in ancient Babylon have seem that although the weights used back then, ie; shekels and talents were widely varying that one could buy between 300-400 loaves of bread for what would be an ounce of good in today’s weights, and today if you are buying bread from a bakery it is going to be around $8 for a one pound loaf. So that means an ounce purchases 350 quality loaves of bread. But if youre ok with super low quality preservative laden dish sponge bread then you can buy over a thousand loaves but they didnt have access to industrial machinery and all the chemical additives we have today so bread made in small bakeries is the best comparison since the labor and resources required to produce are still similar some 5000+ years later bread making and the oven havent changed all that much in this time.

But ultimately gold’s value doesnt change. The value of money used to replace/ represent gold is what changes. We are currently experiencing unprecedented hyperinflation and subsequent austerity caused by 5+ decades of right wing economic policy the intentions of which are to turn the American working class into new age slaves or get conditions of the labor market as close to chattel slavery ad possible which would be the most beneficial outcome for those with capital.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why the fuck would gold be "the true measure of inflation"? What year is it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Because it’s price increases in tandem with the increase in circulating currency. The rich look at us like we are disposable and not intelligent enough to understand things like this. But the rich all consider gold to be a safe haven investment that is virtually inflation proof. It retains its value. Gold is the one commodity who’s price increases in direct relation to the amount of currency printed into circulation

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The price of gold is inflated by being sold to doomsday prepper idiots. It's not worth a fraction of what people pay for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is a room temp iq take. But whayever helps you sleep at night.

Basically you are saying the valuable metal that makes the glowing screen in your hand function and has limitless technological and industrial applications isn't worth the arbitrarily valued pieces of cotton paper we print faster than an army of rabbits shit and breed and are only deemed valuable because wealthy people who treat laborers like disposable cattle and engorge themselves on industries literally propped upon fraud tell us that those paper notes are valuable….

Sure buddy what ever you say. If i had to choose to follow “the doomsday prepper idiots” who have amassed arsenals, and stockpiles of ammunition valuable currencies that will outlive any paper fiat currency and all the other commodities needed to live or the group of people laughing at them when shit hits the fan, im definitely going to be following the former while you all shit your pants and beg the “idiot preppers” to let you followed them while you have nothing to offer of any value.

Keep trusting billionaires considering it has gone so well For us this far…..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Humans have extracted absurd amounts of gold from the earth. It is not remotely scarce. Its value is artificially inflated just like diamonds. Platinum and palladium are more rare and just as useful, but cost less than half as much.

The value of currency is not based on the value of paper, but the value of the country issuing it. It has worth because the country has the labor force and economic stability to ensure it will be redeemed for value.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That is 100% incorrect. Compared to paper and cotton gold is scarce also the diamond market is manipulated by debeers and some other players and the gold market is not the only thing limiting how much gold is available is how fast it can be mined and processed. And that is not easy tk do otherwise we would all be panning rivers for as much as possible instead of working garbage wage slave jobs

Gold was the first currency, paper currency is a replacement, up till nixon withdrew from the bretton woods agreement and then subsequent administrations made a shady dealmwith the saudis and opec to make the USD be the only currency accepted to buy crude oil which solidified in 1979 right before we printed the first trillion in 1981. But if it werent for that one strategic move which changed the playing field of currency as we know it then the us dollar would have tanked harder than the titanic and worse than it has in the last 54 years

Platinum and paladium arent gold though. You cant hammer either into paper thin layers or mold it and separate it with minimal tooling like gold. These are different metals with different properties.

But without the whole fabrication of the concept of a petro dollar then the us dollar would not be the global reserve currency today and that would have 100% been due to the fact that we ended the convertibility of paper money to gold in 1971 which was brought on by the us acquiring a massive debt before 1971 due to awful conservative policies and the countries who held this debt began trading it in for gold so the us governemnt did what they could to not loose what little they had left at the time.

If the value represented by paper currency isnt representative of golf then what does it represent besides thin air and the promise of those who regularly commit fraud with impunity?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Once again, the value of paper money isn't the paper itself, but the worth of the country issuing it. They know that if a country like the US suddenly became unable to support it's currency, people would only be trading ammunition.

Gold backed currency is a bad idea and that is why it was abandoned globally. It puts a country at the mercy of supply and demand. This makes inflation and deflation uncontrollable. When the California gold rush happened, the supply of gold increased causing rapid inflation. Between 1848 and 1855 inflation increased 30% nationally, while California itself experienced inflation as high as 1000%. The other big problem with a gold standard is what happens when a country must make large expenditures, for example when they are defending against invasion. This causes massive deflation of gold backed currency and was a major cause for the global economic downturn following WW1 and the subsequent abandonment of the global gold standard.

Gold was the first currency

No it wasn't. Silver was the dominant currency for centuries before gold. Before that probably the most widely used currency was cowrie shells.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Silver was used but gold was more valuable and sought after so this is the equivalent of saying that $5 bills were the main form of currency because a majority of people were too poor to have larger bills. The first record of Gold coins was in egypt circa 1200 bc and 600 years before silver coins became more common.

Gold backed currency was abandoned globally because of central banking dominance and since we’ve transferred to elastic currency weve seen hyper inflation in the usa that we are being lied about in regards to. Rent for a 2 bedroom apartment has gone from between $30-50 a month to $2200-2500 a month in just 54 years so please tell me how its a good thing to just print valueless trust me bro money out of thin air with nothing but the trade of a commodity that is burned for energy backing it. Also the petro dollar was a last ditch effort imposed by the isa with help from saudi royals and OPEC To ensure thst the us dollar wouldn’t tank even harder than it has due to ending the gold standard so we didnt have to make good on our promise to convert all us bank notes to gold upon the demand of any country or person who had the us reserve currency.

If gold backed currency was so bad then why was inflation before we abandoned the gold standard and started printing money faster than nudie magazines

Here is a quote on the gold rush inflation you speak of that says youre point is pretty much bullshit. This inflation was limited to gold mining towns and close by areas where some miners became huper wealthy and those loving around them sought to profit off of their newfound wealth by arbitrarily increasing prices. Wages went from $3-5 a day to upwards of $12-16

“Although the short-term impact of the Gold Rush included inflation and a reduction in the dollar’s purchasing power, the long-term benefits were significant. The wealth generated by gold mining helped stimulate investments in businesses and infrastructure, laying the groundwork for the industrial growth of the late 19th century. The broader U.S. economy eventually absorbed the increased money supply, and as production expanded, inflationary pressures eased. 

By the late 1850s, the dollar’s value had begun to stabilize. The rush’s economic growth, particularly in the western states, helped balance the inflationary pressures of prior years. Wealth generated during the Gold Rush further contributed to the westward expansion and development of the economy, providing the financial foundation for future growth. 

As gold reserves increased, the U.S. Mint had more flexibility to mint coins and issue currency. However, the increase in gold posed challenges in maintaining stable prices as inflation rose along with the expanded monetary base. 

Despite this, the increased gold reserves eventually paved the way for greater stability. Gold became a cornerstone of U.S. monetary policy as the economy grew, providing the stability needed for continued economic expansion.”

The gold standard was a far superior economic model for currency than the current system which sees regular increased inflation that is intentionally downplayed by leading financial institutions in an effort to prevent fomenting societal unrest/ discontent and resulting socio-economic / political violence from the working class.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Rent for a 2 bedroom apartment has gone from between $30-50 a month to $2200-2500 a month in just 54 years

Which has absolutely nothing to do with going off the gold standard. It is based on a low housing supply due to excessive regulation and wealthy people buying property as an investment.

If gold backed currency was so bad then why was inflation before we abandoned the gold standard and started printing money faster than nudie magazines

Look at this graph.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year

See those wild swings between high inflation to high deflation? The economy is more stable off the gold standard because the government can respond to economic shocks more effectively.

The gold standard was a far superior economic model for currency than the current system

Then why do basically all people, regardless of political stance, who study the economy for a living think you are wrong?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Economics isnt a real science it is a school of thought the purpose of which is to defend the mechanisms of exploitation and cruelty that are inherent and celebrated within capitalism. And it doesn’t matter what economists tell us on corporsre owned propaganda news outlets what matters is that wealthy people consider gold to be an inflation proof store of wealth and a hedge against inflation. When the price of gold increases the dollar weakens. Cpi is an inadequate measure of inflation because as i said earlier it does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply. Are you telling me that tbe increaae in currency supply and the us debt increasing over 72 times in 54 years isnt right on the money with the increase in gold price? Are you that bad with basic arithmetic?

For the first 172 years of the US dollar as a standardized currency from 1799 till 1971 the price of gold was solid at $18-19 announce until after the great depression when FDR temporarily suspended the gold standard and made it illegal to hoard gold in bulk and bought up as much of the supply as possible at $18 an ounce before revaluing it at $35 an ounce. So thats a 94% fluctuation in 172 years compared to today in less than 33% of that time since 1971 its at 8200% and a months rent for a decent 2 bedroom in a decent area has always been around an ounce of gold.

And that wide swing shown in red on that graph was caused by the new credit based policies where stocks were sold to snyone with only 10% of the purchase price in liquid which was the main cause of the great depression. Pretty similar to the NINJA loans that fueled the MBS sub prime housing loan situation that wall street committed fraud to try to stave off before it crashed in 2008 an awful situation our economy still hasn’t recovered from. And you see that red stopped after FDR instituted quick action to save thebus dollar as i mentioned above. Another factor that caused the great depression was the stock buy ack which fdr outlawed and wasnt again relegalized till the reagan administration which normalized the blatant theft of surplus labor value and exploitation of the workers so that all the surplus value could ve funneled back into stocks to artificially increase the value of shares and trigger massive executive bonuses and shareholder dividends without adversely effecting the share value after those dividend payouts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Economics isnt a real science

The Novel Prize committee says it is a science and I am more inclined to believe them than you.

Are you telling me that tbe increaae in currency supply and the us debt increasing over 72 times in 54 years isnt right on the money with the increase in gold price?

As of 2024 the US holds 8,133 tons of gold. Germany, Italy and France hold just as much combined. The IMF holds 2,800 tons.

Stockpiling a resource decreases supply, which artificially inflates the cost.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You mean the Nobel Prize committee? The same people who gave Obama a war mongering neo liberal fascist the peace prize for all those peaceful drone bombings he ordered? Yeah they are really fucking credible, about as credibke as the ADL when they said elon musk didnt blatantly do a fascist salute in front of all the white nationalists sycophants at the Trump inauguration.

Economics isnt a real science, i just aced the first few quizes of economics on khan academy to see how much science is involved and my suspicions are correct. Econ is just bullshit that aims to solidify the ideas that free markets are good and have done such a great job of adequately distributing resources in a society and socialism is the devil so lets all just bend over and let billionaire central banking military and prison industry profiteers tell us what color the fucking sky is and ignore our basic senses.

Here is the basic reality, money isn't real, its paper we all have been indoctrinated to believe in its value because it benefits the wealthy who wxert their capital to exploit large swaths of labor so they can live in opulent luxury at our expense. they use violence to enforce this system at our detriment, gold is real, silver is real, but silver is highly undervalued right now and has been for the last 25 years at least and gold is the only commodity that has proportionally increased in value when compared to the reckless over printing of currency and accumulation of national debt on the us dollar. Your arguments amount to “nah ah, the super credible people who tell us what to think don't agree with you even though their actions support what you’re saying we should just trust our merciful aristocratic overlords and trust their plan for our dwindling future prospects and ignore the borderline austerity conditions in the usa today becasue so long as cheap consumer goods fill box stores and billionaires are buying more yachts then we can claim the stock market and subsequently the entire exonomy are booming never-mind the un affordability of rent and housing, decades of wage stagnation and 60% of workers living paycheck to paycheck with no emergency savings. Also the large stores of gold these governments and financial institutions have stockpiled solidifies my point, if the value of money was based upon the money itself and the trustworthiness of the government printing that money then they wouldn’t need to stockpile gold they would just print more money but its a fact that the more money you print the less value each bank note holds and the more the price of gold increases in perpetuity as the circulating currency supply increases.

Also less than 11 tons of gold you just mentioned out of the estimated 212,000 tons currently above ground is barely 5% of the supply, so this is not what is pushing the price of gold to balloon 8200% in the last 53 years. But keep on trusting central banking institutions who have defrauded entire economies multiple times with no consequences what so ever. Its like thinking the pack of hungry wolves outside your door are begging to be domesticated or thst you have a real interpersonal connection with the stripper you just paid $400 to grind over your jeans.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Jesus that is a gish gallop. TLDR

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You can just say you've lost the argument and or given up instead of trying to exude superiority in your failed points by attempting to say too many words/ a verbose detailed argument somehow lessens the strength of my arguments. Its like saying einstein’s mathematical formulas were somehow wrong because there were too many variables and functions / too complicated couldn't make sense of it 🤣

just say you give up and consider your arguments are just nonsense you’ve been conditioned to believe by people who would literally still own slaves if it were still legal (actually they still do in more ways than one) but if you believe what wall street economists tell the general public then you probably also believe that corporate news outlets are credible journalistic sources and the US is a bastion of true democracy which we spread across the globe using the friendly persuasion of a highly armed industrialized military apparatus.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Some of the best advice I ever heard was that if you can't express your argument concisely, you don't understand it well enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I have expressed my argument concisely you just keep moving the goal posts and clinging to the idea that institutions that have defrauded the American people as well as the world are trustworthy which is laughable. Also if you look hard enough you can find that these institutions are lying and occasionally say the quiet part out loud. This is a wall street owned legacy media outlet saying that for a family of four to have a comfortable life requires an income that equals about 60 to 95 ounces of gold annually depending upon which state that family lives in. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/20/the-income-a-family-of-4-needs-to-live-comfortably-in-every-state.html

But go ahead and keep believing the liars who have bought our political institutions and representatives. Who tell us that minimum wage would be around $24/hr if it had kept up with inflation since 1970. that is so laughable $24 an hour even before taxes is garbage and not even worth getting out of bed for. I used to be able to barely afford rent back in 2011 for a 2 bedroom in an ivy league college town it was $900/month at the time. The SAME apartment today is $2450/month so that $24/hour which is $960 before tax deductions is fucking garbage. The poverty line hasn't been adequately adjusted in decades and federal minimum wage is 16 years without adjustment and it’ll be 20 years after this disaster of an administration sinks the country further into fascism. But i bet you also disagree that america is fascist regardless which party is in control even though as benitto moussolini said fascism would be more appropriately called corporatism since it is the consolidation of corporate power and the state.

We live in a society where the majority of people are totally blind and dumb to reality. The news actively undermines the best interest of the people and works to minimize any unrest/ discontent in the population with distractions and out right lies. They actively use psychological warfare against us and people like yourself just keep on parroting delusional nonsensical takes that everything is fine and people who are sounding the alarms are just over reacting. There is no left party in the usa there is a far right and a center right pretending to be the left. We live in a class dictatorship and any idea that the news outlets and financial institutions shaping the social discourse have any credibility is a farce.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (6 children)

We live in a society where the majority of people are totally blind and dumb to reality.

And you are one of them. There is no global conspiracy against the gold standard. Smarter people than you know it's a bad idea.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Gold is no more important than any other commodity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Not true. It is a metal with extremely specific properties. It is resistant to tarnishing and oxidation and it is incredibly malleable. Gold can be rolled and thinned out to a layer that is translucent which is what they do to cover the glass on astronauts helmets and provide more protection to UV radiation. Gold has now and for the last 70 years had numerous applications within technology. There is a reason gold is expensive and it isn’t just because its shiny and yellow and a status symbol. It is because it is a very unique and useful element.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

Those are all useful properties. It's still no more important than any other commodity. There is no reason whatsoever to say it's the "true measure of inflation". That's goldbug nonsense.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I saw this coming in 2019 with the advent of Corona.

I promptly cleaned out my meagre savings and bought gold.

"But muh bitcoins". Well, we'll talk again in a year or 5, see how that went ;)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Will ask you to elaborate what you mean by the "advent of Corona"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

End of 2019, start of 2020 when it was starting to look likely we would get lockdowns. There is no greater indicator for instability.

And now with Trump, the instability just keeps coming, which will drive more and more people away from fiat currency to both crypto and physical wealth. Both are educated guesses at best but the pattern is quite obvious by now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Advent means: the act of coming upon a scene

So pretty sure it's just "the coming upon of the scene of COVID-19"
just with slang as the name for the virus as basically every group hated calling it the same thing to some of our annoyance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Not asking for definition, asking for OP to explain their intent

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Bitcoin definitely was the better buy. Gold really is not a good investment. Its value doesn't exponentially increase. Its not a speculative asset. Gold only maintains its value. So you ensured you didnt loose value, you just protected your wealth. But if you bought bitcoin you would have multiplied your wealth by 3500% i told my family to buy bitcoin at the outset of the pandemic when it was around $3000 or so. I told my mother to empty her 401k/IRA take the tax hit and buy bitcoin. i was pretty much laughed at. But now i bring it up all the time and I laugh about it. I didn’t have the money to do it myself since i live in abject poverty but i still saw what was coming a mile away. Bitcoin is ultimately the future of money. Banks already digitized currency decades ago and the numbers on the screen that represent your bank account have no concrete backing. It’s just as funny as funny money can get. Whereas bitcoin and legitimate cryptocurrencies have blackchain/ distributed ledger technology(it was designed to be a peer to peer distributed decentralized currency/ banking system. And people like Jamie Dimon (one of the biggest fraudsters in modern times and someone who’s hands were covered in some of the most blood after the 08 collapse of MBS bonds/ the housing market) tell us that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and is valueless meanwhile behind the scenes all these big banks are investing billions in developing their own blockchain technology which shows they are full of shit and just saying whatever they can in order to perpetuate ideas that serve to protect the financial interests of western capitalist hegemony.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yup. I made 3k off bitcoin in 2018 and sold off then, thinking it would crash soon. I didn't buy the gold with the intent to "get rich quick", just as a store of value. Added reasons are that I don't trust banks. I graduated in 2008. I haven't forgotten how, for example, the people of Cyprus were literally robbed from part of their savings by their government to pay for the crisis. For the record, at this point the only way to get rich off bitcoin is to create shitcoins and rugpull or be a whale, both are forms of degenerate gambling the likes of which should stay limited to wallstreetbets.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Interesting. I always know that CPI is a bad model and is worse yet at viewing the purchase power change of our currency. Especially since it leaves out some very important items like you know: Real estate, energy costs, insurance, etc and the fact that there are new standards of living which includes additional utilities and commodity items.

I'm not entirely sure gold is the best way to measure it but it's not exactly an unhelpful tool in observing the loss of purchase power of the dollar. As we have absolutely lost our ability to do more than purchase the decorations for our cages.

As an aside, my father works with a guy who does weekly trips down to his favorite fishing hole in Texas from the northeast Atlantic area, he flies via private chartered plane each time. This means he spends about $2 million dollars a year just to travel to go fishing not including other expenses or trips. He complains he isn't making as much as he wants.
The wealth gap is horrendous.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Especially since it leaves out some very important items like you know: Real estate, energy costs, insurance, et

CPI includes all those things.

. . . there are new standards of living which includes additional utilities and commodity items.

Which is why CPI is tweaked regularly to match what people actually buy.

There have been various other ways to measure inflation that have popped up over the years, such as the MIT Billion Prices Project. Nothing ever matches perfectly, but they show the same overall trends that CPI does.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Not the core number that is often quoted.

And it still only contains a small amount of items that I understand are selected to try and provide a random blind representation of inflation of costs of purchased goods.

Sure. It tracks retail item prices. But it's not amazing it's mostly a scatter plot with a general trend so it feels impartial but isn't. And as I specifically said it's really bad as a representation for purchasing power or the effectiveness of wages.

They even swapped home prices to rent because it "better represents the average American" it removes anything considered investments, which is major component of what made the American middle class and society.

It's fine on a technicality of what it measures it measures, but it's not a useful tool.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›