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by BigTTYGothGF 1 hour ago
> The Gilded Age, which had quite high levels of inequality, occurred when the gold standard was active

I've got some news for you about modern levels of inequality.

3 comments

I am aware of today's inequality (e.g., I read Piketty back when he was making a splash). But the critique is that Greenspan argued gold standard = less inequality and that fails on the historical record.

If we want to talk about the causes of the 'New Gilded Age' that's something else. As a general starting point I'd begin with:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism

Gold Standard is probably a force that acts against inequality but the forces pushing inequality today are just much stronger. Technology that creates winner take all markets and incredible leverage with few people being one.
Yea, that's his point. The gold standard neither prevents nor encourages inequality, except inasmuch as it limits policy flexibility (which, similarly, could be used to promote or limit inequality).
Policy flexibility is the only one of those that’s in theory responsive to democratic governance. Your opinion of whether that’s a good thing or not depends somewhat on which side of the inequality you’re on, I think.
Don’t those two data points suggest inequality is orthogonal to the gold standard?