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by mwbajor
1017 days ago
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I agree with everything you are saying with the exception of the fact that it seemed to be a better intermediary than paper currency. I think that is something the "end the fed", "bring back gold" people don't understand. You're right, I cant do anything with gold alone, its actually quite useless. My argument for gold (if you even want to call it that) is more to keep politicians in check from printing more money where "printing more money" really means a politicization of the financial industry and increasing wealth inequality. The human element was less when a gold standard existed. I'd be all for a paper currency if limits to politician involvement were somehow built into it, I'm not really a fan of Gold in any sense. I've read that in 1972 some of these checks were supposed to be implemented but never were, partly because the nixon shock was supposed to be temporary and partly because polticians realized they could have more power. |
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The Gilded Age, when income inequality in the US and EU was at its highest, occurred during the Gold Standard:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
The US has returned to those levels of wealth concentration, but having paper currency backed by gold didn't prevent the first round. Further, there was much more wealth inequality, with the aristocracy, when gold and silver coins were the actual currency (rather than paper notes).
> The human element was less when a gold standard existed.
Wild gyrations of finance and economy due to human behaviour were worse pre-Fed and during the Gold Standard:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...
* https://archive.ph/FWKcL
Various 'incidents' during the Gold Standard era:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1896
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907