90% Of Americans Are Poorer Today Than They Were 27 Years Ago

You guys talk about inflation, here are some figures I came up with one year ago and put in a thread I posted called "Historic value of U.S. copper and silver coins and present day metal values". www.abovetopsecret.com...

Current Value of 1794 Coins by Weight and Metal Purity
1.6038g gold = 0.056572oz = $76.49
24.057g silver = 0.84859oz = $19.17 (or $17.26 at 90% purity)
1350g copper = 47.61oz = $9.70

Looking at just the silver and copper values ranging from $17.26 to $9.70, we get an average value of a dollar in 1794 as $13.48 modern U.S. dollars. We can also see this as an inflation rate of 17.26 times the original value for silver and 9.7 times for copper. Add copper and the silver to gold ratio together and the average value of a dollar in 1794 was $34.48. Also we can see that gold has inflated to 76.49 times it’s original value.

"If you use my average value a current U.S. dollar is equal to 7.41 cents in the 1790s. Also, the average inflation over the past 219 years have devalued the dollar by 6.15 cents per year."

When I figured that one out, I did the math a couple of times and a couple different ways and assured myself that it was correct. But after looking at it again, I wondered if that meant that in another year our money could be worth only 1.26 cents compared to the 1790s silver dollar coin and then possibly the following year be -4.98 cents? That would be like having to pay someone 5 cents just to take it for nothing in return - like its cursed and you want to get rid of it.

So, I don't think we dropped to a dollar being worth 1.26 cents this year, it will take some time and fluctuate before inflation drops the value. We will put the dollar on life support and keep it alive as long as possible and it will devalue by infinite fractions. The day we hit a dollar valued at - 4.98 cents is, in a practical sense, is the day the dollar dies and is worth zero.

originally posted by: FyreByrd
a reply to: AlaskanDad

Lets overlay the tax rates onto your most excellent graph:

Interesting n'cest pas?

There seems to be a caption missing from the graph. Optimal for whom?

Perhaps it is optimal for lazy pubic sector parasites who want to leech off their betters.

Seriously what do you mean by optimal? Most people would see optimal tax as the lowest it can be and still provide good government services.

This is what happens when a democracy devolves into a corporatocracy.

Greed crushes the middle class and upper middle class, now we just have low middle class, poor and ultra rich.

...and there is your 9/11 conspiracy theory!

HIgh taxes and bureaucratic regulations have run businesses to foreign countries. All that nonsense about illegals doing the jobs Americans won't do is just not true. It's baloney that Americans won't do construction and housekeeping and landscape.
Our government spending is out of control. The Fed is printing money nonstop. The crooks in government have increased spending programs and unfunded liabilities, kept us in war, given themselves raises and special healthcare, caused everyone's ins premiums to rise, and caused massive inflation with QE1 and QE2 and the bailouts. It is unsustainable. Socialism doesn't work. Redistribution doesn't work. Keynesianism doesn't work.
The Housing bubble hurt many Americans. Real Estate taxes have gone up monumentally. Food prices have gone up. Everything has gone up.
So people think that if we raise the minimum wage it will help, but it will add fuel to inflation by raising the cost of production. The ACA has caused businesses to stop hiring and to cut hours. People now have to get two jobs to do what they had with one job.
Many of our better jobs are being outsourced overseas. Many of them are tech jobs.

a reply to: FyreByrd

We cannot, any longer, expect any career politian to think in terms that are benefical to the public - only career public service have the education, experience and knowledge in their fields to be of value.

We do have plenty of career politicians, and many of them go into office with modest earnings and go out with incredible wealth. Harry Reid is one of those. Pelosi was allowed to become wealthier by having access to insider information. As for your public servants.... well the situation in Wisconsin was a good example to see... how public unions were causing a deficit in the state budget, and how Scott Walker stopped the collective bargaining there and got the budget under control.
Sooooo I don't think that having lots and lots of public servants is going to help things. Support for bigger government just doesn't work.
Anyway, politicians are public servants but they seem to be serving the wrong people these days.

a reply to: 0bserver1

Whether they work or not .. studies show that if you give citizens this basic income like 800 to 1000 euro's a month they are willing to work even more then before and minimum wages can be stopped because of that basic income.

Well good luck with that. Just look at the welfare rolls and you will find that when people are given money they have no incentive to work, also when people have their just rewards for work taken away and given to others, you will find they won't work as hard. But I guess those pushing for socialism will have to find out the hard way. As they say, eventually you run out of other people's money.
When more people are not working than are, what are you going to do? Print more money? Causes inflation....see the train running off the track?

a reply to: whatnext21

I wonder if tptb realize how much of an effort it is today to just keep things going.

They do because that's part of the plan, to cause more and more people to become dependent on the Nanny State. But they themselves cannot relate to how it feels because they are the wealthiest and do not feel what their policies are doing to everyone else.

I must be in the other 10%

Thirty years ago, my kids were little, and I had a high mortgage relative to my income.

Now I'm retired, have no debt own a number of properties and don't have any issues paying my monthly bills.

I'm far from rich but I'm doing well

People (as in some who actually know me) have mocked me and made fun of my "conspiracy theories" for years, but I saw this coming clear back in my early high school years (early 90's) and now it is happening. I vowed at 16 that I would not start a family or father children because I did not want them to suffer through these hard times and the coming civil and global war. Maybe if I survive and maybe if I am still fairly young when the dust settles, maybe then I will start a family.

The ultra-wealthy have been stealing the financial wealth of this nation for a century while turning the citizens on each other, making left and right believe the other is at fault. So the left and right will slaughter each other, never understanding the puppetteers are just getting even more wealthy by confiscating the land of the dead.

Hey, it's good to know that I'm in the upper percentile for something!
Back in the '80s I was a single mom with a mortgage and credit card debt left to me by a low-life husband who disappeared and took our savings with him. I did have a job that paid decent wages but it was making me miserable so I took the money returned to my paycheck by the Reagan tax cuts and got my debts paid off and went back to school. I also vowed to never incur debt again, no credit cards---ever! No buying anything that I couldn't pay for in cash because those were the days of home mortgage rates being upward of 7% and credit cards were in the 20% range.
I met a man who had the same financial philosophy and actually saw the need to plan for the future. Together we managed to put four of our five kids through college and pay off all our debts by living like grad students.
We did break down and take a mortgage when we built our new home 23 years ago but we paid it off in five years by continuing to live like grad students (way below our means rather than above our means) and keeping a tight budget. There was no better feeling in the world than the day we burned that mortgage note!
Some of our children learned from us and they are doing well. The ones who decided to follow the normal American credit-card-driven path are struggling. It is sad to have to watch them suffer for their mistakes but apparently that is the only way some people can learn. Even sadder is when they don't learn from their mistakes and continue to attempt to be part of the "Latest gadget, newest vehicle, etc" club to the point of losing it all rather than admitting that a five year-old really doesn't NEED a computer or cell phone.

Work more. Sleep less. Eat less. Buy less. You'll be dead soon. Life is nothing compared to the eternal bliss of the afterlife promised to you by your creator. Why sweat the small stuff?

Late to the party..

But i want to add that this graph looks the same as gold and silver prices from 2000 up..

Ironic that.

Gold prior to 2000 was about 200 and Oz and silver was i think 4 or 5 bucks an oz..

Telling graphs are telling.

a reply to: gentledissident

More truth to that then I'm al ost comfortable admitting. The first 30 went by pretty fast.

There are several reasons why Americans earn less money today. 1st of all the emergence of the world economy all but wiped out manufacturing in this country. Back in the day any kid could graduate from high school and get a pretty good job and stay there til they retired. Now that same opportunity requires changing careers several times during your lifetime.

When they can hire people to do the same job in third world countries and produce that same goods (maybe not the same quality). Then with inflation it now requires both people to work in a family. The people making the money are those who have chosen wisely in their career paths and those who have the initiative to go out and start a business or invent a new product or idea.

originally posted by: gentledissident
Work more. Sleep less. Eat less. Buy less. You'll be dead soon. Life is nothing compared to the eternal bliss of the afterlife promised to you by your creator. Why sweat the small stuff?

Yeah, keep living the fantasy.
What if this is the only consciousness you will ever know?
Stop living the fallacy that your struggles now will make your afterlife total bliss.

Lets make life now total bliss.

You religious people make me sick, you bend over and take it while waiting for that reward that may never come, the product of a fantasy.
This is what we have, we must fix this, now!

Get your headf out of the clouds, god ain't gonna fix it, we got to fix it.
Heaven is nothing but an idea, a product of wishful thinking, if not, you can't prove it, so don't base your life on it.

How much less crap we could have if people weren't waiting for that 'reward' as described in some book of fairy tales.

There.
Think!

a reply to: Toadmund

There is a reality to both of your perspective. I think they can both work together.

Instead of getting mad, they are praying to deities.

Almost like religion is a social pacifier to keep people from rebelling.

a reply to: Toadmund

That's been it's purpose for all of human history.....

Here's a good way to see this, Rise above that of which tries to put you down. Life only gives you what you can handle, and there is always more in a worse off place, so be nice to everyone, but always watch your six...

Life is changing, but change is part of life, the wealthy may have their resources, but statistics show the wealthy also get dumber with the more they aren't having to do themselves, while those who are more resourceful are able to adapt to much much more issues they're faced with.

We are humans, we can and will shape the world we live in by the actions we deal with and the thoughts we create.

Forward is the only way, stagnation is for those who can afford it, and want to go backwards, we can and will always be stronger than those who seek to put us down, it's a law of our will. The more efforts there are to keep us down, the more we will break on through to true enlightenment, and it's not in a dollar, or material thing, it's in our souls and mindset.

in 2008 the recession / depression hit hard, and that wasn't a coincidence that Bitcoin was also brought into the mainstream, while cryptocurrency as a concept has been around since early 90s, many were and are tired of this centralized push to keep the average joe busy with work and bills. We will opensourced everything soon, and decentralized the whole lot, we are far too cluttered with the current state of cog and gear systems wasting resources to provide resources, while there is a much easier and plentiful solution, working together.

Forward we live, believe in yourself, since many don't believe in you.

In Cryptocurrency we trust, an opensourced decentralized revolution is being created, and founded by the very people tired of sitting still.

Crisis precipitates change...