What is $5,000 worth today, and is it better than 1,600 in the 80's?

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.

millercarbon ...

That was truly excellent. Thank you for posting it.

The term "dollar" is a term of measurement, not unlike the terms "pint" "quart" or "gallon." So, when we ask  someone how much they want for a certain product, and the response is: "ten dollars," the retort should be: "ten 'dollars' of what?" Americans used to know that "ten 'dollars' of what?" ... meant ten "dollars" worth of either gold or silver.

The hidden secret is that with precious metals as a basis for money, it is impossible to build a welfare state.

 In order to create an additional "dollar" under a metal system, another "dollar's" worth of metal must be dug out of the ground. That applies the worth of labor to the "dollar." 

Under a fiat (paper) money system, the government can print at will to support all kinds of nefarious things ... like unending political wars for example.

The benefit of a fiat money system is that it empowers those in control at the present time. The ultimate price of a fiat money system is huge debts that must be paid by future generations. At the present time, the national debt stands at 23 trillion dollars, and the unfunded liabilities stand at over 200 trillion dollars.

Gold/silver is the currency of free men. Paper is the money of economic slaves.

Here's a good start for anyone interested in the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Paul-Money-Book-Congressman/dp/B000M0R36M

Frank

Anyone who reads Ron Paul will be shocked to discover the crotchety old geezer has a deep well grounded knowledge of our constitutional republic and monetary system. Turns out there’s a reason they make him look on TV like a yammering old crank- he’s talking point blank about tyranny and liberty and how they institute the one while making us think we’ve got the other.

The Federal Reserve Bank is neither federal (its privately owned) nor holds any reserves (its all paper certificates) and isn’t even a bank but a clever way of bailing out banks. It was the third US central bank, the first two having failed so disastrously no one would have supported another. But we were tricked into it. The fascinating story is told:

https://www.chinhnghia.com/The-Creature-from-Jekyll-Island-by-G.-Edward-Griffin.pdf

Edwin Vieira is a constitutional scholar and attorney who has argued AND WON cases before the Supreme Court. His magnum opus on money-
https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Eight-Disabilities-Constitution-Foundation/dp/0967175917

These are the anti-dotes to the brainwashing we call education, so effective I came out of college with a business degree and knew all about stocks and bonds and yet somehow mysteriously never a word about silver and gold. A whole four year degree built around the uses of money without ever a word about what money actually is. Now I know why.

With sound money, money with actual intrinsic value that cannot be created from nothing, all the power is with the people. We would find better and more efficient uses, everything would be cheaper and better and more, and questions like Eric asked, the answers self-evident.

As it is we still manage to have improvements with technologies like Synergistic and Tekton use, a whole bunch of things that never even existed 50 years ago and make music sound better than ever. B&O developed a moving iron cartridge, Soundsmith developed it to perform light years better. And the only reason its Hyperion is $8k instead of $80 is our bogus unit of measure.

Based on how much we have deviated from discussion of audio, I must conclude that I am correct in all of the points below:

• Class D is the only high end audio amplifier topology left.
  
• Power cables don't matter
• Speaker driver counts should be a prime number.
  

A silver dime is worth about a bit less than $1.50 (90% silver and 10% copper). Silver is trading in the range of $13 - $15 an ounce. And yes, things were a lot more affordable 40 - 50 years ago! Though wages were comparably lower.