patrick.net

Technology has made some things less expensive (deflation); communication comes to mind.
I ran up a $700 phone bill once with my international and “long distance” USA calls.
Today voip is free, with FaceTime, WhatsApp, etc.

The government is creating wage inflation right now; it’s paying for people to stay home, so McDonalds is offering a $200 bonus to work ($11/hr) and Target is offering $15/hour.

With wage inflation, almost everything goes up.

The government has also made real estate less available; people are not being foreclosed as they normally would be, and they are not being evicted either.

I would not be buying a house now either until the interference ends.

Silver sucks, my friend has a lot of it that he bought for $45-$50+ per ounce years ago, that’s the epitome of the opportunity cost; I was yelling at him to buy mutual funds and AAPL at the time. I made a bundle and he’s underwater.

WineHorror1 says

Correct. Texture and taste are different.

"pink slime"

Booger says

WineHorror1 says

I just spent $18 for a burger, fries and soda last night at 5 Guys.

I remember when $5 was considered expensive for a hamburger.

If you can, go rural. We went out last night with the kids and my Blackened Chicken Sandwich with fries and 5 beers (we walked) was $18. I think the total before tip was like $55 for two pizzas, tenders, fish tenders and my meal included. Service was slow because no one wants to work, but we know everyone and we are patient and also the reason for 5 beers, lol. I think 2 Tito's and soda for the wife as well. Sit down place, food made fresh.

I've given up on chains for the most part and fast foods 100%. We'll hit some up on vacations but that's about it. Last time I think I had 5 Guys was out in Bozeman. Only 2nd time. Wasn't impressed regardless of the price. I prefer to cook at home or go local where I know the food and the people cooking it. Tip well and give back to the community in a small way. McDonalds and the like are there to extract money from your community. I wish they were short staffed and not my local restaurants and bars. And yes, I know most are franchisees, but it's rare for them to be individual and not own multiple.

WookieMan says

Booger says

WineHorror1 says

I just spent $18 for a burger, fries and soda last night at 5 Guys.

I remember when $5 was considered expensive for a hamburger.

If you can, go rural. We went out last night with the kids and my Blackened Chicken Sandwich with fries and 5 beers (we walked) was $18. I think the total before tip was like $55 for two pizzas, tenders, fish tenders and my meal included. Service was slow because no one wants to work, but we know everyone and we are patient and also the reason for 5 beers, lol. I think 2 Tito's and soda for the wife as well. Sit down place, food made fresh.

I've given up on chains for the most part and fast foods 100%. We'll hit some up on vacations but that's about it. Last time I think I had 5 Guys was out in Bozeman. Only 2nd time. Wasn't impressed rega...

5 Guys used to be my favorite burger place. No longer. Won't ever go again. Yes, things are expensive in Northern Virginia. I live about 1 mile from the CIA.

WookieMan says

Last time I think I had 5 Guys was out in Bozeman. Only 2nd time. Wasn't impressed regardless of the price.

I also think that 5 guys sucks.

WookieMan says

I prefer to cook at home or go local where I know the food and the people cooking it. Tip well and give back to the community in a small way. McDonalds and the like are there to extract money from your community. I wish they were short staffed and not my local restaurants and bars. And yes, I know most are franchisees, but it's rare for them to be individual and not own multiple.

That type of attitude may help bring down corporate idiocy and influence of Big Woke Corporations on society. Buy local, patronize local mom and pop restaurants, etc. We bought half of cow from a local farmer and some chickens, drink local beer, don't drink coke and Pepsi, etc. We can't do this for all of our needs, but if enough people do this, Big Woke Business Which Sucks Biden Dick will suffer. They are getting crafty though. Example is karbach brewery in Houston, it was independent, then was bought by a conglomerate, beer started tasting like piss, and it took superhuman efforts to figure out that they have sold out (nothing mentioned on label, still supposedly local).

Booger says

I also think that 5 guys sucks

They've also left Waco.

WineHorror1 says

5 Guys used to be my favorite burger place. No longer. Won't ever go again. Yes, things are expensive in Northern Virginia. I live about 1 mile from the CIA.

$18 just seems nuts for a burger meal. Just started this year, but bought half a cow. For $18 I could take 3 tubes of ground beef we have and make probably 20 burgers. We have about 20 tubes. Freshly processed. I'm pressing burgers today for tomorrow grilling. Doing 4 racks of ribs as well. I'm sure you know this, as long as you keep an eye on it, can season well, it's hard to fuck up cooking. Just takes time, hence why fast food is popular.

When I was doing a 9-5 I'd pack a lunch. Leftovers or a basic turkey or ham sandwich. I got suck into the fast food black hole in my 20's and it sucked. Wasn't fat, but was overweight for my age. Regret not being in better shape so I dumped the fast food and lost 15lbs. It was daily McDonalds. It was awful. Metabolism caught up to me around 28.

I like Five Guys but yes, their prices are high.

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says

Only way I'll accept the Gold and Silver Standard is that it is 0% Paper/Digital and 100% Actual Metal for wages/salary.

Paper is actually more valuable in an honest financial system, seriously. Look at the bank of Florence Venice, kicked ass at evaluating all kinds of coin in circulation, and never, and I mean NEVER practiced fractional reserve banking. If they said they had your money, they had it, every red cent. And not just in a month, or on a Wednesday, but every day, 24/7 365. Because of their reputation their paper held a very high value.

NuttBoxer says

Look at the bank of Florence, kicked ass at evaluating all kinds of coin in circulation, and never, and I mean NEVER practiced fractional reserve banking. If they said they had your money, they had it, every red cent. And not just in a month, or on a Wednesday, but every day, 24/7 365. Because of their reputation their paper held a very high value.

What happened?

NuttBoxer says

Paper is actually more valuable in an honest financial system, seriously. Look at the bank of Florence,

Look at the backpages of19th Century US/UK newspapers. You deposit physical silver, get a banknote for the amount, go a state over, and they want to give you only 80% of that paper.

No Paper, physical only. Banks and Corporations can trade paper. Wages, Salaries get paid in physical metal. Best insurance against bank failures ever.

NuttBoxer says

If they said they had your money, they had it, every red cent.

A balance sheet from the London branch of the Medici Bank, dated November 12, 1477, shows that a significant number of the bank’s debts corresponded to demand deposits. Raymond de Roover himself estimates that at one point, the bank’s primary reserves were down to 50 percent of total demand liabilities. 60 If we apply the standard criterion used by A.P. Usher, this implies a credit expansion ratio of twice the demand deposits received by the bank. There is evidence, however, that this ratio gradually worsened over the bank’s life-span, especially after 1464, a year that marked the beginning of growing difficulties for the bank. The roots of the general economic and bank crisis that ruined the Medici Bank resemble those Carlo M. Cipolla identifies in his study of fourteenth-century Florence. As a matter of fact, credit expansion resulting from bankers’ misappropriation of demand deposits gave rise to an artificial boom fed by the increase in the money supply and its seemingly “beneficial” short-term effects. Nevertheless, since this process sprang from an increase in the money supply, namely credit unbacked by growth in real savings...

https://cdn.mises.org/Money_Bank_Credit_and_Economic_Cycles_De%20Soto.pdf

Banks would never become powerful entities if all they did was charge a small fee for locking up gold or assisting distant transactions.

Paying wages/salaries in physical gold/silver only means that all the Financial Shennanigans would mostly bite Bankers on the ass and leave the ordinary folks alone- even benefit them during a crisis as big orgs would bleed inventory and other assets to cover their ass and only ordinary people would have the real cash to buy them up.

B.A.C.A.H. says

What happened?

Sorry, it was Venice not Florence. The politicians eventually forgot why they had outlawed fractional reserve, and re-instated it.

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says

Banks would never become powerful entities if all they did was charge a small fee for locking up gold or assisting distant transactions.

Venice did charge for holding deposits, notary work, etc. But they did not loan out what they did not have. Their paper actually commanded a premium over metals because of the number of coins in circulation, and how good the bank was at determining value.

NuttBoxer says

Venice did charge for holding deposits, notary work, etc. But they did not loan out what they did not have. Their paper actually commanded a premium over metals because of the number of coins in circulation, and how good the bank was at determining value.

Good for Venice. Banks and Corporations can trade that wonderful paper with each other. Eventually, the bankers gave in to the usual pressure and it collapsed also. For the USA, all wages/salaries in physical metal.

If we're going to trade paper, we can trade paper without the gold/silver.

No Gold/Silver standard without a Constitutional Amendment to pay all wages in physical silver/gold and banning ANY AND ALL, Public OR Private, paper/digital for that purpose. And it must declared legal tender for the satisfaction of all debts, including physical delivery - nobody can refuse the metal itself as payment for purchases or debt.

NuttBoxer says

The politicians eventually forgot why they had outlawed fractional reserve, and re-instated it.

They didn't forget.

You’ll pay these prices and like it! Or else we will sell it all to people with more money than you!

Onvacation says

They didn't forget.

Got greedy is a more negative, and possibly more accurate statement. They wanted loans.

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says

If we're going to trade paper, we can trade paper without the gold/silver.

It all comes down to whether your bank is honest or not. If they are, then you should have no problem using paper for the transactions it makes sense for. If they aren't, then why the fuck are you banking there?

MisdemeanorRebellionNoCoupForYou says

No Gold/Silver standard without a Constitutional Amendment to pay all wages in physical silver/gold and banning ANY AND ALL, Public OR Private, paper/digital for that purpose. And it must declared legal tender for the satisfaction of all debts, including physical delivery - nobody can refuse the metal itself as payment for purchases or debt.

I would love this, but is it possible?

What is the ratio between all US wages paid in two weeks' time, and the total value of gold and silver in the US?

I really don't know the answer.

Patrick says

What is the ratio between all US wages paid in two weeks' time, and the total value of gold and silver in the US?

In our search for an answer of tracking a commodity to create our own inflation gauge, we settled on an ounce of gold: how many hours of median-priced labor would a median American trade for an ounce of gold. This exercise morphed from trying to gauge inflation and purchasing power, into what would be a reasonable market price for an ounce of gold.

Of course, we had to take into account the deflation of purchasing power of American wages that was papered over by women transitioning into the Labor Force. We used Census data for this. The way that we did it was looking for inflection points in a smoothed plot of median household income to median wage income. (I have since lost all the data when my computer crashed).

The graph pointed to a date in the late 60's / early 70's. Surprise! Whaddaya know. That's the window when the US went off the Gold Standard. Going off the Gold Standard was a years-long process, not a single event. It began in 1968 when the US pulled out of the Gold Pool trading where a market price was set, and culminated in the 1971 Nixon decree.

Another inflection point was around 1995, when median household income vs median wage income flat-lined. We assumed it meant that all the homemakers who would ever enter the labor market, had done so. The slope of the trend that ended around 1995 correlated to about a 1% per year secular decline for the contribution of the individual worker to the household income. You could say, a 1% per year decline in the purchasing power / 1% decline in the standard of living per year.

These all pointed to, when we did analysis in 2007, a trade of something like 40 hours of median labor per ounce of gold. Assuming our 1% deflator, 14 years later a median worker have to trade about 46 hours of labor to pay for that ounce.

I lost all that data a few years later and am too Lazy to redo it.

46 hrs per oz sounds reasonable.

Current price of $1800 / 46 = about $39 per hour equivalent.

Since the US only has about 8000 tonnes of gold in reserves, we have about $250 billion worth of gold.

The US has about $5.5 trillion in cash, bank deposits and money market instruments. Going to a gold standard is not feasible.

The metals markets are some of the most manipulated markets in the world with the major bullion banks holding just fractions of their outstanding obligations and in the case of silver they are naked short thousand and thousands of tonnes.

The government will not allow the peasants to crash the system and will outlaw owning precious metals physically before letting the banking system tumble.

Misc says

The US has about $5.5 trillion in cash, bank deposits and money market instruments. Going to a gold standard is not feasible.

FFS - of course it is. You just increase the value of gold.

At the end of Wiemar Germany, you could literally buy a HOUSE with a single ounce of gold.

Either way you cut it, this system is coming down at some point. We're already bankrupt, and I don't think a farmer is going to be trading you food for a bitcoin.

There is no savior in gold. The gold simply doesn't exist and if you have any, it will simply be confiscated because it's been outlawed.

A farmer isn't going to be trading you food for gold either, but since farmers on average are in debt about $1 million, they will trade for dollars.

There is a great future in bullets. Think about it. Will you think about it?

RC2006 says

There is a great future in bullets. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Have you seen the price of ammo recently?

I have no doubt it is a great investment.

richwicks says

and I don't think a farmer is going to be trading you food for a bitcoin.

Personally, part of my portfolio diversification / retirement plan is to purchase / build a small farm with decent self sufficiency. A deep well, decent soil, good supply of seeds, some animals, solar, septic, and remote.

It's good insurance against a lot of potential catastrophes. Doesn't cost too much either, and will likely hold its value well.

Misc says

There is no savior in gold. The gold simply doesn't exist and if you have any, it will simply be confiscated because it's been outlawed.

People accumulating gold would dump it in the Mariana's trench rather than give it to the criminals that caused the economic collapse.

This isn't the 1930's any more when people had a high level of trust in the government. In fact, prior to the outlawing of gold in 1933, many people sent it over-seas. This is why gold coins from the late 1920's are in pristine condition. They were never circulated.

RC2006 says

There is a great future in bullets. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Sure. Consider that the ATF regulates exactly those things that preserve wealth in a societal meltdown: Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms

I believe it's illegal for you to own and warehouse more than a certain amount of alcohol without a special permit from our owners, so they can know where it is and come take it if you oppose their mastery over you.

richwicks says

At the end of Wiemar Germany, you could literally buy a HOUSE with a single ounce of gold.

Yes, and at the end of the Nazi era, people used cigarettes as currency because:

1. there is always demand and they are not trivial to create
2. a carton of cigarettes could be split into packs (how many packs in a carton?), and packs into (typically 20) individual cigarettes to make change

Hircus says

46 hrs per oz sounds reasonable.

Current price of $1800 / 46 = about $39 per hour equivalent.

Equals $78K per year.

It's still a relatively rich mans game.

Hircus says

richwicks says

and I don't think a farmer is going to be trading you food for a bitcoin.

Personally, part of my portfolio diversification / retirement plan is to purchase / build a small farm with decent self sufficiency. A deep well, decent soil, good supply of seeds, some animals, solar, septic, and remote.

It's good insurance against a lot of potential catastrophes. Doesn't cost too much either, and will likely hold its value well.

This is my long term goal. Also would be nice to leave for kids hopefully I will be able to instill the value of it so they would keep it for future generations.

Hircus says

Personally, part of my portfolio diversification / retirement plan is to purchase / build a small farm with decent self sufficiency. A deep well, decent soil, good supply of seeds, some animals, solar, septic, and remote.

Unless you grew up in the sticks, like I did, and actually tended a relatively large garden, like I was forced to do as a kid, as a chore, you have no idea how unrealistic it is to live off the land, especially in old age.

You know what the principle difference between a vegetable you grow in your own garden, and one you buy at the store? It's a hell of a lot less work to buy it at the store.

Your primary concern will be obtaining water. Solar power and septic, those are easy to do and really not necessary to be honest.

I plan to keep it somewhat low maintenance. My desire isn't to live off the land most of the time, but to be able to live off the land, if needed. If the need arises, I can plant lots of additional seed, and begin multiplying the animals. Stockpiles of dry goods can easily cover food needs during a farm ramp up phase.

Misc says

There is no savior in gold. The gold simply doesn't exist and if you have any, it will simply be confiscated because it's been outlawed.

A farmer isn't going to be trading you food for gold either, but since farmers on average are in debt about $1 million, they will trade for dollars.

4,000 years of history and free/black markets say otherwise.

Hircus says

46 hrs per oz sounds reasonable.

Current price of $1800 / 46 = about $39 per hour equivalent.

He said MEDIAN labor. I believe median labor is around $25/hour. So, that means 72 hours.

Misc says

RC2006 says

There is a great future in bullets. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Have you seen the price of ammo recently?

I have no doubt it is a great investment.

It is starting to come down.

WineHorror1 says

He said MEDIAN labor. I believe median labor is around $25/hour. So, that means 72 hours.

Yeah.

So it means by our reckoning that either gold is over-priced in dollars, or the decline in our living standard has accelerated from the 1% per year we reckoned for 1971 to 1995.

As a percent of our nation's wealth, gold has plummeted in value.