Do you gold bugs ever stop to consider that no country that has used the gold standard didn't also take over the gold supply and dictate its pricing? The gold standard actually gave us WWII because Weimar Germany lost all control of its gold and was forced to devalue its currency to purchase food post WWI. It also had no productive capacity and had no choice but to manufacture more money. Inflation is always about real resources, not money.
"Money became Fiat in 1971 when Nixon decided to withdraw the dollar from the gold standard. Up until then for every dollar, there was a deposit of gold to back it up."
Money became fiat when our nation was founded per Article 1: Section 8 and came with a mandate to create it for the "common welfare". The law forcing it to purchase gold to match its deficit spending was not an issue of concern while we enjoyed net exporter status and while our government didn't need to increase the money supply for war or disaster.
It didn't take very long as a net importer for reasonable people to see such nonsense as a road to fiscal ruin. Even then, gold was only traded internationally, not domestically, but there was never a time during our gold standard insanity that the average person could own gold beyond its jewelry value, which was always far above the government's set price. FDR removed domestic gold as a limit to federal spending well before WWII and that allowed us to make headway against the depression and do our part in defeating Nazism.
As much as you might want to deny it, we get real resources and labor in exchange for our fiat currency, and we will unless some idiot convinces enough voters to take a failed path again simply because of their "feels" surrounding a government they are inclined to want to overthrow at the first opportunity, which is the real motivation behind gold fever.
The need to view money as an object of value is so 19th century and will never see any more than pandering from any politician with an ounce of econ training. Money is a public monopoly that governments use to drive resources and labor into the private sector via taxation so they can provision themselves on demand, regardless of a revenue position or past spending. It serves as our only store of value for our commerce and the only way to satisfy private sector bank debt.
It serves quite well for those purposes, albeit via some corrupt and inept politicians. What more should we expect it to do besides give false security to your need to see some "backing" that it never had?
