> the same goods are manufactured for 1/10th the cost overseas and somehow cost way more anyway
> I didn't say they were getting great returns
Ah, the old voodoo defense of the missing money.
> You can keep denying the reality that gold has much value, but you're wrong
I never said it didn't have value. It's bad as a currency. It's volatile and it hamstrings economies. Please read what is actually written and don't argue with your own strawmen.
> Every country wants fiat because they can print it, plain and simple
Then you have very little understanding of modern economies. Explain carefully the difference between the Fed and Treasury and how new money actually enters the system. You seem to know nothing of this.
The actual reason countries switched is the evidence against gold is overwhelming. Simply google the papers with the empirical data across several hundred years and ~100 countries that make it clear.
You can continue to argue from ignorance, or you can simply educate yourself and read the literature and evidence.
> The supply of gold is steady, growing at perhaps 2% per year.
The mismatch between gold discovery and production versus needs of an economy is simply bad for a currency, which should expand and contract as the needs of the economy demands, otherwise there is more inflation/deflation cycles.
For example. around Christmas, as people increase spending, there is a need for more actual money, otherwise prices will fluctuate as too little money chases more goods. Every January this spending decreases, so, if the money supply didn't contract, then again prices will fluctuate as too much monry chases less sales. As a result, the Fed every xmas releases more money as demand increases, and every Jan pulls money back to prevent these cycles. You cannot do that with gold, or BTC, or any of the "too ignorant to understand money" crowd that has claims of "better" solutions without first understanding the current solutions, and in particular why those solutions exist and what previous problems they solved.
I suspect you're completely unaware of these things, yet continue to argue from ignorance.
>>You can keep denying the reality that gold has much value, but you're wrong
>I never said it didn't have value. It's bad as a currency. It's volatile and it hamstrings economies. Please read what is actually written and don't argue with your own strawmen.
It's not bad as a currency. It is portable, divisible, not perishable, and intrinsically valuable. It also does not vary a lot in supply. It's not as volatile as you keep asserting, in real terms. If there is ever a shortage of gold, it merely becomes more valuable and that encourages people to spend the gold they have and hold it for less time when they get it. If it gets more valuable, that also encourages people to dig it up. So any natural shortage is a self-correcting problem for many reasons.
>>Every country wants fiat because they can print it, plain and simple
>Then you have very little understanding of modern economies. Explain carefully the difference between the Fed and Treasury and how new money actually enters the system. You seem to know nothing of this.
I don't care to get into too many details (I know you will be a pedantic jerk about anything I say). But in short, the Fed is a pseudo-private entity intended to give an illusion of independence so that the government does not appear to have the power to directly print money. The Treasury borrows money from the Fed and the public. That is one way that fiat money gets created. There are other types of money too, such as fiat money created through commercial bank lending.
>The actual reason countries switched is the evidence against gold is overwhelming. Simply google the papers with the empirical data across several hundred years and ~100 countries that make it clear.
There are some plausible downsides to gold, but the academics are practically owned by banking institutions. Do you think you'll get to be a famous economist with accepted papers by going against what the cartel wants?
One reason we moved off of the gold standard was because in the wake of World War 2, the US held a disproportionate amount of the world's gold. Being in such a favorable position, the US pushed for a fiat system based on the US dollar with the promise of eventual convertibility of dollars to gold. From there, the US stopped converting dollars into gold directly in 1971, and since then everyone has been using fiat. Who in their right mind would set up a gold-based system to trade with the dominant power who has a fiat system? You'd be trading your precious gold for units that can be rendered worthless at any time. That is exactly why the world is dumping the dollar now and there is so much interest in the BRICS system.
>You can continue to argue from ignorance, or you can simply educate yourself and read the literature and evidence.
You can continue thinking you know everything just because you heard some "expert" apologist for the current system tell you, or you can think for yourself and read up on what I'm telling you.
>>The supply of gold is steady, growing at perhaps 2% per year.
You don't know what you're looking at. That's production. The current supply of gold is about 212k tons (I think metric tons): https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold . According to your own link, the production in 2014 was 2860 tons. That's less than 2% of the total supply. I would link you to a chart of the supply over time, but it seems incredibly hard to find one.
>The mismatch between gold discovery and production versus needs of an economy is simply bad for a currency, which should expand and contract as the needs of the economy demands, otherwise there is more inflation/deflation cycles.
What happens with gold is that the price of gold just changes, credit is issued, and/or it circulates faster as needed. Printing currency or issuing credit creates an illusion of abundance when the economy is not productive enough to support the spending that's taking place. Basing the currency on a real thing discourages abuses of the financial system, because you can only keep up a charade so long before people see through it. You can increase the money supply with a gold-based system, just like with a fractional reserve system, so long as people don't call you out on your mismanagement of the supply and exit the system with their gold.
>You cannot do that with gold, or BTC, or any of the "too ignorant to understand money" crowd that has claims of "better" solutions without first understanding the current solutions, and in particular why those solutions exist and what previous problems they solved.
>I suspect you're completely unaware of these things, yet continue to argue from ignorance.
Oh I'm aware of it. You seem to not be though. I would never endorse BTC but gold is in another ballpark entirely.
>>The Great Depression was caused....
>You might want to read some literature on the topic first [condescending link here]
I've read books on the subject, on top of being told in every economics class that it was due to a credit bubble. There were other factors such as a series of crop failures, the Dust Bowl, and so on. But the real crash was in 1929, before the Dust Bowl. By the way, the Federal Reserve was in place before that crash. So I guess their fancy theory didn't fucking work now did it? Or maybe the directors of that system accomplished exactly what they set out to do, which is to seize the country's gold and enrich their friends, and to start the process of getting more power through a fiat money system.
>Question: how many courses on economics have you formally taken and what were they?
I've been out of school so long I don't remember. It doesn't especially matter. You can look up everything I said if you want to, but I don't think you do because you're too conceited. But really, I think I've taken at least 2 general macroeconomics courses. I have received the official story about the world monetary system and the Great Depression formally like 3-5 times in school, starting as a juvenile. It is all plausible, by design, and of course academics cling to that story as nothing else will be accepted by the people who run the system. They cannot tolerate people in positions of authority raising doubts about the financial system or the prudence of printing money.
> I didn't say they were getting great returns
Ah, the old voodoo defense of the missing money.
> You can keep denying the reality that gold has much value, but you're wrong
I never said it didn't have value. It's bad as a currency. It's volatile and it hamstrings economies. Please read what is actually written and don't argue with your own strawmen.
> Every country wants fiat because they can print it, plain and simple
Then you have very little understanding of modern economies. Explain carefully the difference between the Fed and Treasury and how new money actually enters the system. You seem to know nothing of this.
The actual reason countries switched is the evidence against gold is overwhelming. Simply google the papers with the empirical data across several hundred years and ~100 countries that make it clear.
You can continue to argue from ignorance, or you can simply educate yourself and read the literature and evidence.
> The supply of gold is steady, growing at perhaps 2% per year.
This too is simply untrue, e.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Gold_Production_1....
The mismatch between gold discovery and production versus needs of an economy is simply bad for a currency, which should expand and contract as the needs of the economy demands, otherwise there is more inflation/deflation cycles.
For example. around Christmas, as people increase spending, there is a need for more actual money, otherwise prices will fluctuate as too little money chases more goods. Every January this spending decreases, so, if the money supply didn't contract, then again prices will fluctuate as too much monry chases less sales. As a result, the Fed every xmas releases more money as demand increases, and every Jan pulls money back to prevent these cycles. You cannot do that with gold, or BTC, or any of the "too ignorant to understand money" crowd that has claims of "better" solutions without first understanding the current solutions, and in particular why those solutions exist and what previous problems they solved.
I suspect you're completely unaware of these things, yet continue to argue from ignorance.
> The Great Depression was caused....
You might want to read some literature on the topic first https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C15&q=gol...
Question: how many courses on economics have you formally taken and what were they?