Reviving the Dollar

Only seniors remember when a Baby Ruth was three times the size it is today and only cost a nickel. Only a few of us remember penny candy or nickel soft drinks. The first new car I bought was a 1967 Ford Fairlane GT, and to the best of my memory, I paid around $3,850 for it off the showroom floor, and that included taxes and tags. Today, a new car like that would cost over $30,000 before taxes and registration. So what happened to the value of our money, and what can we do to prevent the dollar from becoming totally worthless? Currently, there's a bill in Congress, HR5404, to define the value of the dollar in terms of gold. The first 6 points of the bill explains why we need to get back on the gold standard:

1. The United States dollar has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power since 2000, and 96 percent of its purchasing power since the end of the gold standard in 1913.
2. Under the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation objective, the dollar loses half of its purchasing power every generation, or 35 years.
3. American families need long-term price stability to meet their household spending needs, save money, and plan for retirement.
4. The Federal Reserve policy of long-term inflation has made American manufacturing uncompetitive, raising the cost of United States manufactured goods by more than 40 percent since 2000, compared to less than 20 percent in Germany and France.
5. Between 2000 and 2010, United States manufacturing employment shrunk by one-third after holding steady for 30 years at nearly 20,000,000 jobs.
6. The American economy needs a stable dollar, fixed exchange rates, and money supply controlled by the market not the government*.

*The Federal Reserve is not the government. What most people don't realize is that the Dollar wasn't always a fiat currency, and it retained value regardless of ups and downs in the banking world. Our founders fixed the value of the dollar to a certain amount of gold, and that gave the dollar it's status as real money and preserved it's purchasing power. Real money is a physical object with monetary value, such as gold or silver. Silver dollars and gold dollars are real money, and paper notes are legal tender when backed by silver or gold. In contrast, a fiat currency, like the current dollar, is called legal tender, but it has no monetary value beyond it's accepted value, and that can be easily manipulated by Federal Reserve bankers. The way that bankers make off with all the loot is through tools like interest rates and devaluation known as inflation. High interest rates drive up the cost of borrowing money and create economic stagnation, and an oversupply of money, like we have today, creates inflation and erodes the value of the dollar. For example, $100 in 1967 is only worth about $7.35 today. So, if you saved $100 in 1967 for retirement, it will only buy you less than a pound of coffee today. Moreover, there's no way the average working class can ever get ahead, when the money they save losses it value at a rate great than the interest it earns in a savings account. By the same token, raising the minimum wage may provide some relief, but it's only temporary because inflation is going to quickly erode the value of the dollar and leave those who benefited from the increase back in the same situation. The one thing that we can count on is that when the minimum wage goes up, prices always go up with it. It's a never ending cycle, and the only way to escape it is by reinstating the gold standard, and rebooting the dollar. HR5404 is the first step in reversing the cycle. The next step should be for Congress to step up and repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and turn the creation of U.S. currency back to the U.S. Treasury - the way our founders established. I ask that everyone contact their representatives and tell them to support HR5404, and restore America's independence from foreign bankers.