[notahacker]

"Workers are forced to buy real estate that they don't need"

No, the average worker definitely isn't forced to buy more houses than they live in :D

I mean, it's always been obvious that the "lack of Gold Standard is the real reason workers are poor" is an astroturf movement by the ultra rich who have successfully lobbied for tax breaks for the rich and elimination of worker protections to blame something else [which removing would further benefit them] for the logical consequences of their actions, but the complete failure to understand what an average worker actually does with money is particularly amusing in this subthread. Strong people who don't work for a living cosplaying people who do energy here...

Since falling wage levels literally are deflation it's a bit hard to argue with a straight face that what the workers really need to be better off is a good old dose of deflationary currency.

[lowkey]

> "lack of Gold Standard is the real reason workers are poor"

I would argue that it is less about the lack of a gold standard and more about the lack of a hard money standard that cannot be debased by centralized powers such as governments and central bankers.

Bitcoin is an excellent substitute for gold as hard money since it also cannot be debased (i.e. inflated) by central actors. Debasement (money printing) steals the value of the purchasing power of the worker and gives it to those closest to those in power via the Cantillon effect.

Bitcoin is also much more easily verifiable than gold. There is no such thing as counterfeit Bitcoin. Either you receive valid Bitcoin on an address that you access through a wallet that supports the Bitcoin protocol or you don’t. No need to worry about an assay to ensure that your gold isn’t actually Tungsten.

[throwaway248329]

Do you disagree that real estate is used as a hedge against inflation, which artificially increases the prices?

And you can call "lack of Gold Standard is the real reason workers are poor" an astroturf, but it's something that actually makes sense to me when I look at the arguments.

[AnimalMuppet]

I'm a worker. I can buy a bigger house than I need as an investment. Or I can buy the size I need, and take the money that I would have invested in the bigger house and put it in the stock market instead. Sure, some people do buy bigger houses as investment. They sure aren't "forced" to, though - not even for investment reasons.

And, the fact that an argument makes sense to you is a really poor response to an argument telling you why your position is wrong. (Of course, calling it an astroturf isn't much of an argument against it, either...)

Lack of a gold standard means inflation can happen. Is inflation why workers are poor? It's part of the reason, and it works this way: Inflation happens, then later workers' wages go up. The price increases come first. That makes workers poorer to some degree.

But workers are still pretty poor during periods of low inflation. Why? Because they aren't paid enough. And why is that? Lack of unions, lack of individual bargaining power, greedy owners, lack of ability to produce enough value to be worth more. (I think that all of the above are true at least to some degree.) Which of those does the gold standard fix? Does it create unions? Does it give individual employees more bargaining power with their employers? Does it make owners less greedy? Does it give workers the skills to do more valuable things? No, no, no, and no.

So the gold standard won't really fix worker poverty.

[throwaway248329]

Sure, I'm not "forced" to buy real estate, but I think it's fair to say that I'm forced to invest and buy speculative assets, otherwise my savings will slowly melt away.

And of course I also don't think that once gold standard is established, there will be absolutely no poverty.

[notahacker]

To the extent capitalist speculation on housing as an inflation hedge drives up the prices of assets workers store much of their wealth in, it benefits them a lot more than "not bothering to invest in anything at all, least of all job creation" being the rich's hedge against deflation

If it "makes sense to you" that the lack of Gold Standard is the real reason workers are poor, it probably helps to consider that workers were much poorer for the vast majority of human history with a Gold Standard...

[throwaway248329]

>If it "makes sense to you" that the lack of Gold Standard is the real reason workers are poor, it probably helps to consider that workers were much poorer for the vast majority of human history with a Gold Standard...

That doesn't tell much. Anyone was much poorer for the vast majority of human history.

How do you explain the wealth inequality trend change starting from 1971? https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

[notahacker]

It doesn't, for the most part. In most of the graphs its pretty obvious the rich getting richer bit happened in the 1980s, not the 1970s. It's also obvious their share of wealth was particularly large in the 1920s, when there was a very pure gold standard. (And of course back when most people were so much poorer there wasnt even enough food to go around, the rich still had palaces, servants and mountains of gold to fund wars to engage in the most profitable economic activity of capturing other people's gold)

But obviously the people who advocated the tax cuts for the rich in the 1980s are highly, highly motivated to pretend it was leaving Gold Standard several years earlier that did it. Not least because going back to a gold standard would allow them to make that gap even bigger - the 1% could HODL the 30% their wealth in risk free, liquid, appreciating coins instead of having to take actual risks and create actual jobs. But the deflation that preserves their wealth as they withdraw from funding productive activity is - quite literally - everyone else's wages and sales revenues going down.

[throwaway248329]

Sure, it's possible that the wealth disparity rise happened for other reasons, not related with gold standard.

However, I can still look at those charts and say that the gold standard does not harm the poor the way you imply it does.

[notahacker]

Sure, but the original discussion wasn't concerning the rare exception to the rule the gold standard hurts the poor (a brief period between 1958 and 1971 in the US which started with half the world's gold supply, and so growth and inflation took occurred as normal).

The original discussion was concerning the insane fantasy that the US economy would be better off backed by a deflationary cryptocurrency than the US dollar.