I am not an economist so I don’t know enough of inflation (except that it goes higher and higher), but the quality of equipment is "much" better now.
Right. The answer is simple and staring you right in the face every time you open your wallet. But we’re all so conditioned to believe the lie we won’t believe the truth even when clearly explained. Hold my beer and watch this:
Printed right on the green bills in there are the words Federal Reserve Note. A note is a loan. You could look it up. Its an IOU. That’s why if you go on-line or to a coin shop and look up our old currency, it used to say things like "payable to the bearer on demand in gold" or silver, or "there exists in the vaults gold..." in other words the paper was a claim on physical money (gold and silver) and the further back you go the more explicit and clear this was. Printed right on the note.
As a matter of fact if you go back to 1776 the Constitution defines money as gold and silver coin, and gives congress the authority to regulate its fineness. You don’t regulate the "fineness" of a paper Federal Reserve Note. FRNs you "print" like this: Ctrl+P. Yeah. Because its so far removed from money its not even paper, its digits. On a screen.
This becomes relevant real fast when you go look up the price of things like corn. Going back to the 1600’s when the only money was silver and gold coin the price of a bushel of corn was the same all the way from the Pilgrims to the Civil War. Oh there were blips. But DYODD. Look it up. The blips were all brief and mostly due to.... wars. They’d print paper money to pay the troops to fight the wars. Sound familiar?
Only now the wars go on forever.
Human beings however are really clever. Someone makes something better they make a nice profit. Better, or cheaper. Or both. The profit motive is strong as can be and so someone somewhere is always striving to make a buck by making something cheaper and better. Economists call this productivity.
Productivity is always going up. Computers sent it rocketing up crazy fast. Everything should be so much better today no one would even think for a second to ask Eric’s question. It would be so obvious.
The reason its not is because we’ve all been deluded into thinking of the USD as a sound basis for measuring over time. Day to day, fine. But over the years? Has it somehow escaped your attention we used to measure dollars in thousands, now its trillions? Going on quadrillions? How on Earth is that a stable measure?
Meanwhile, another simple exercise, instead of dollars go look at the price of things in ounces of gold. Or silver. The gallon of gas that used to be a dime STILL IS- IF you sell your SILVER dime for FRNs. The best mens $50 suit STILL IS but only if paid in the same ounce of gold, now $1500 when priced in FRNs.
You can do this with all kinds of things. OF COURSE your dollar buys a lot more today. Your DOLLAR. NOT your Federal Reserve Note.
