[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.