[corentin]

I think you may be confusing two things here. The federal debt indeed is backed by the taxing power of the US government. That is, if you lend it 100 dollars today, you can have some confidence that you will get them back plus interests in the future.

But the dollar isn't backed by much; it's backed by trust, which itself depends on the acts of the Fed (i.e. it really depends on what the Fed does). If you can buy two widgets for 100 dollars today, you don't have much confidence that you'll be able to buy them in the future.

In either case, there's nothing to guarantee your purchasing power. With gold, your purchasing power isn't 100% protected either (because new gold is digged every day) but at least you're much safer from arbitrarily high inflation.

But you are obviously correct when you say that money isn't worthless.