So, a phenomenon of the 21st century though is how we can produce money out of essentially nothing - be it either just printing it (because we are the de facto fiat currency in the world) or technology would be another good example. Before, you needed some kind of raw material as input into finished goods... now, we can put in labor with little or nothing else, and in the case of services performed for consumers, or developing software, there isn't a 'feeder' industry at the bottom of the socio economic scale.

For building a car, a lot of people work in a lot of smaller / less-skilled businesses making valves, pumps, hoses, belts, etc. For software, no one except the software developers get paid (and maybe the landlord on the building). I think that, more than anything else is creating the wealth gap.

I'm sure you're right. Even cash transactions are looked at as suspicious now.

Agreed, there are of course many factors. But the devaluation of currency through inflation is foundational, and has a knock on effect on everything else. It is also a wealth tax which has greater effect on the "lower & middle class" than on the wealthy.
The fact that the devaluation accelerated rapidly after 1971, is one of the most significant of the many factors.

I'll remember how you bought a car.
Gold coins? I think the dealership boss would say
to go sell the coins and come back with cash.

I paid for my current car with a stack of C-notes, clipped together in sets of ten. It was a pretty big company; I was shocked how they dropped agreed immediately to take much less once it was sitting on the table. This would have been easier if it had been a stack of 1 oz gold coins.

I'm not good at doing the pirate voice, though.

I can just see myself talking like a pirate while I plop down a bag of gold as the down payment on a car.

I use some silver too, but it has an entirely different purpose.

Also much of my lead is not really lead anymore but an alloy with some tungsten and Nylon as a binder. Things like that tend to move faster.

Are gold sales registered in some manner? How would one know what to confiscate from whom? Does jewelry count, or is it exempt?

Jan

Gold stays the same, dollars change.

Not much to see here... the 1% prior to the 1930's were the robber barons which essentially controlled monopolies on raw materials and transportation. By the 1930s, there was growing competition and automation demanded more people - then of course WWI and WWII hit and pounded the wealthy pretty hard with taxation...

Going off the gold standard, may have had an impact... but by 1984 the stock market also went on a run that essentially lifted the US economy by 500 - 600%.

These days, the spending power of just the federal government's revenues are far more than the size of the entire economy in the 60's I would think.

I'm not a fan of inflation, but I'm saying there are a heck of a lot of factors that go into that time period and not just the affect of a single action.

The erosion of the lower & middle class has been much more greatly impacted by the US not being "the world's economy" anymore as we were in the 60's & 70's. You have to realize, all of Asia and Europe were decimated in WWII. Heck, China wasn't even out of the dark ages yet in the 1970s.

I love it when someone takes something that has little more than a placebo affect and holds it up to be "the smoking gun" without mentioning the other 15,000 variables.

Emeralds appear to be a good hedge too

I keep ALL of my precious metal in Brass and Lead.

You just can't use gold or silver for that matter as a medium of exchange so why own it as a hedge against inflation.

The key to the problem is: correctly identifying the professions of the top one-percent. They are the very central bankers who set up the system, going clear back to the Bank of England at the time of William and Mary.

I was looking at the charts, and I do not see the correlation of Gold Standard vs. the 90% or the 1 %.

Their charts are a decade off from the rise. I think I would look at the Governments Banking regulations. THEN do a correlation.

The Federal government became addicted to inflating its way out of deficit spending. Of course, this will only work so long. With the present Regime hellbent on spending and Yellen & Company unwilling to raise interest rates, something has to give. Having a nest egg in some form of gold can't be a bad thing, unless of course, Dear Leader goes all FDR and starts confiscating it.

Yes, inflation is the key.
It transfers value from all people, not just taxpayers (but mainly from lower income earners), towards government and the very wealthy.

Period of inflation and exportation of our industrial base began after leaving the gold standard, which should also be factored in. Fivedollargold is obviously interested in this topic.