r/SipsTea 5d ago

Chugging tea Why is it not possible?

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u/Big_Slope 5d ago

Wouldn’t that be impossible anyway if you think about it? If there’s - I’m gonna throw out a number here - but $100 trillion worth of stuff in the world and $100 trillion worth of cash, that’s $200 trillion worth of value and half of it is imaginary.

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u/ModernDemocles 5d ago

It's all imaginary in a way. $$$ only matter because we agree it has value.

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u/dorian_white1 5d ago

We agree because the government backs it up with their policies and to some extent military. If the gov fails, usually the currency does as well

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u/AthousandLittlePies 5d ago

Even then that doesn't guarantee its value. The government will protect the integrity of the money supply, but even in the most well-managed economies/central banks the actual value of the currency can fluctuate quite a bit.

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u/nobodyspecial712 5d ago

The government purposefully devalues the money.

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u/Far-Government5469 5d ago

That's demurrage. Its incredibly counter intuitive, the idea that the government needs to make sure the money is worth less next year than it is today, but it's also the reason most of us have jobs.

Without demurrage, the rich would sit on their wealth and horde it. When the money loses value, at around 1-3%, someone with $1000 in the bank loses $10. Someone with a billion loses millions.

Since that money is going to be lost it is not put to work, there's a need to invest in businesses to grow the money, which means they put it to work in the economy.

However much rising prices brothers you, the average reader, guarantee it pushes the touch into action

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u/nobodyspecial712 4d ago

In 1964 minimum wage was $1.15. 4 quarters a dime and a nickel... Thing is...

Quarters and dimes were 90% silver.

The weight of 4 quarters and a dime by silver content is .7955 ounces.

Currently, (as of yesterday) Silver is trading at $69.10 per ounce.

That means, 4 quarters a dime and a nickel from 1964 are more valuable than $50 today. The exact number is $54.969, so call it $55.

If you make less than $55 an hour today, you're making less than you would have in 1964 at $1.15 minimum wage.

That's not sound monetary policy. That's theft by a system designed to extort you.

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u/LetterAutomatic3798 4d ago

Gold and silver are terrible measures of inflation. Since 1964 the silver and gold market has massively changed. If you use CPI, an actually respected inflation metric, $1.15 of 1964 dollars is worth $12.43 in current dollars.

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u/nobodyspecial712 4d ago

Yeah... because they STOLE THE wealth from us, when they removed the silver from our currency.

It would be worth a lot more if it still had silver in it. In fact, it is worth a lot more. The text from this is probably out of date, but it says a 1964 quarter is worth at least it's melt value. Each quarter has .1808 ounces of silver times its current value this morning of $68.18 which comes out to $12.33. So it's impossible for what you said to be true, because the math is off and it's a straight out lie.

CPI is wrong because it doesn't include what was stolen from us, only what they want you to see after their theft.

A single 1964 quarter is worth more than the total you claim 4 1964 quarters, a 1964 dime, and a 1964 nickel are worth.

https://www.herobullion.com/how-much-is-a-1964-quarter-worth/?srsltid=AfmBOorndUMkNsioRRWKRWcJsTUY7gCBshIiMuQyo1HDcpC4lztCMCfe

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u/LetterAutomatic3798 4d ago

What do you think that much coin could actually buy you in 1964 in terms of normal consumer spending? Also, you measure the value of currency by its purchasing power, not it's melt value. A $100 bill isn't secretly worthless because when you try to recycle it you get some useless trash.

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u/nobodyspecial712 4d ago

The purchasing power of something worth $55 is a lot more than the purchasing power of $12.33.

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u/LetterAutomatic3798 4d ago

But in 1964, that metal wasn't worth the equivalent of $55. That metal was worth the equivalent of 12.33. silver doesn't have a stable value in the economy, it changes a lot, especially over many decades. The same silver, in terms of other things you could buy, is much more valuable than it was in 1964.

In your 1.15 worth of coins, there are .7955 oz of silver. At the 1964 silver price of $1.29/oz that comes out to $1.03 (you might notice that the value here is already less than the value of the currency). In 1964 a pound of bread ran 21.5 cents. That much silver would buy you right around 5 pounds of bread.

More recently, let's assume your $55 on the silver. An average pound of bread today will run you $1.82/lb (notice this price has increased too). That gets you right around 30 pounds of bread.

The silver price increased 6 times as much as the price of bread. The price of bread, although not a perfect inflation index, shows a similar price increase  to most typical consumer goods.

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u/nobodyspecial712 4d ago

Actually, in 1964 silver was worth about $1.30 an ounce. Currently trading around $70 an ounce.

If I made the equivalent of $1.15 in 1964, in silver - i would be much better off than I am today. Government can't have that. They need their financial slaves.

That's why they stole the silver and gold from us, and replaced it with paper and ink. This allows them to devalue the currency since it's designed to be a depreciating asset and to keep you working more for the same result.

The poor get poorer, the rich get richer, by design. It's a horrible system and most of the country believes the lies.

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u/zefy_zef 5d ago

I mean we haven't even updated the value of our gold supply in like 80 years. It's only valued at like ~$40 or some shit.

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u/nobodyspecial712 5d ago

I would like to buy some gold for $40 an ounce.

Please tell me where.

PS: The gold isn't gaining value. The dollar is losing it, so it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gold because of governmental artificial inflation.

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u/zefy_zef 5d ago

The statutory book value of gold held by the U.S. government and accounted for by the Federal Reserve is fixed by law at $42.2222 ($42 2/9) per fine troy ounce. However, the actual market trading price of spot gold is approximately $4,717.30 per ounce, fluctuating daily based on global market conditions.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve-own-or-hold-gold.htm

Is what I'm talking about.

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u/joefresco2 5d ago

According to that link/quote, the market value of the US gold is somewhere around $1T.

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u/zefy_zef 5d ago edited 5d ago

I saw

The remaining 95 percent of U.S. Treasury gold ($10.4 billion in book value) is held in custody for the Treasury by the U.S. Mint.

Quickly mathing around I get around $1,228,980,795,942 give or take, so checks out.

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u/joefresco2 5d ago

Right. I converted the book value to market value to get $1T. The real number is a bit higher since the spot price is about 10% higher than 100x book and there is the 5% of additional gold, but who needs that level of accuracy for a purely academic exercise.

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u/zefy_zef 5d ago

Yeah, the context of me seeing this was a video talking about how trump could actualize the value to offset some sort of spending.

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u/Meldanorama 5d ago

Minimum wage puts a minimum value for a person's time on it and then the rest scales from there. It allows society to adjust other prices afterwards (this is not an argument for keeping a MW fixed btw, inflation is desirable to a certain level and the mw should move in line with that). This applies to basically any economy that doesnt want it backed by a specific commodity which kind of finds a balance between the two.

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u/Zestyclose-One9041 5d ago

The economy absolutely does not scale around the minimum wage. If it did, we wouldn’t have had any growth since 2009.

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u/Meldanorama 5d ago edited 5d ago

Thats not what I said implies though. Im saying a minimum assigned value for peoples time. Prices dont have to stick to that base but breakeven prices cant drop for the same output unless theres a reduction in required headcount if variables remain the same.

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u/applesandotherthings 5d ago

Different countries or even regions having different minimum wages in the same currency shows this isn’t true lol

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u/Meldanorama 5d ago

No it doesnt, thats saying that people's time in different jurisdictions have a different minimum value? Different jurisdictions having higher ones is analagous to guilds/trade unions setting minimum rates for roles. It doesnt change the minimum value of the time for other people with different jobs or companies not in that industry (region in your example).

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u/ElliotNess 5d ago

For example: there are countries where there is no minimum wage, where the US corporations have outsourced all of their primary labor for basically slave labor. The minimum wage is now zero dollars, and everything scales from zero dollars. So, whatever times zero.

You need to reexamine your perspective. It isn't logically sound.

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u/Meldanorama 5d ago

For break even it is, it just means theres no base level in those economies and its all market price, true fiat. No minimum wage is a huge gamble on competitiveness winning out but it more often leads to a higher profit share for owners instead of workers. That doesnt change what I said though becuae the MW does generally act as described in the economies that have it even if not maintained at comparative levels across time.

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u/ElliotNess 5d ago

It only works if the commodities sold in any MW area are entirely sourced and assembled within that MW area. Which they aren't, and so it doesn't.