Tag: wealth

Not Just the Dollar: Every Major Currency Has Lost Most of Its Value Since 1971

People predicting the collapse of the dollar often point to inflation and argue that the U.S. dollar has lost much of its purchasing power since 1971, when the United States went off the gold standard. That loss of purchasing power is absolutely true and quantifiable. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data, $100 in 1971 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $822 today, a cumulative loss of roughly 87%.

Inflation, while not good, does not necessarily mean that people are poorer. Inflation means that each dollar purchases less than it did in the past. However, people have dramatically more dollars today than they did in 1971. Nominal wages are dramatically higher today than in 1971. After adjusting for inflation, today’s average hourly wage has about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, but falls short of 1971 levels.

The decline in the dollar’s purchasing power is therefore real, but it does not by itself prove that the dollar is destined to collapse. A collapsing currency produces hyperinflation and a flight out of the currency. Zimbabwe’s inflation peaked at an estimated 89.7 sextillion percent annually in November 2008, with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issuing a $100 trillion note that could barely cover a bus fare. The government legalized foreign currencies, primarily the U.S. dollar, South African rand, and Botswana pula, for transactions, though successive versions of the Zimbabwean dollar continued to exist in various forms alongside them.

Venezuela’s peak annual inflation reached 1.37 million percent in 2018, according to the IMF, and the country had not recovered to anything resembling monetary stability before President Maduro was removed from office by the United States military.

The U.S. case is nowhere near this. Not only does the dollar persist, but it also remains the world’s preferred currency for trade settlement, foreign exchange reserves, and currency trading, and for good reason, because every major currency has experienced inflation and loss of purchasing power since 1971.

The British pound has lost roughly 95% of its purchasing power between 1971 and today, with £100 in 1971 equivalent to about £1,835 now, according to the Office for National Statistics’ composite price index data. Italy is even worse. The lira, which was Italy’s currency until 2002, depreciated so severely through the 1970s and 1980s oil-shock decades that prices in Italy today are roughly 20 times higher than in the late 1960s.

The euro, which replaced the lira, has itself lost purchasing power: €100 in 1997, the year the ECB’s Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices series begins, is equivalent to about €184 today, a loss of 46% in under three decades.

The ruble is the most extreme case among major economies, though a direct 1971 comparison is not possible because the Soviet ruble and the post-1992 Russian Federation ruble are effectively different currencies. From 1993 alone, the ruble lost over 99.9% of its purchasing power, per OECD and World Bank data.

In addition to the gold standard exit, U.S. debt is frequently cited as evidence of dollar decline, which is only partly valid. The underlying assumption that other countries carry little or no debt is false.

Japan’s government debt stands at 230% of GDP, making it the most indebted nation. The U.S. ranks 11th globally at 125%. China’s overall non-financial debt reached 312% of GDP in 2024, placing it among the most indebted countries in the world.

Countries with lower government debt-to-GDP ratios than the U.S. experienced similar declines in their currencies while paying substantially lower wages. This means their citizens are poorer than Americans despite their governments practicing greater fiscal austerity.

The UK’s government debt stood at 94.3% of GDP in 2025. The UNECE puts the UK’s average gross wage at roughly $57,260 annually, compared with a U.S. figure of approximately $82,900.

South Korea’s government debt was 46.8% of GDP in 2024. That is less than half the U.S. ratio. Yet the average gross wage in South Korea was $40,320, less than half the U.S. figure.

Canada’s government net debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 110% in 2024-25. Yet the Canadian dollar has lost roughly 87% of its purchasing power since 1971. Canada’s gross average wages came to roughly $60,680.

Germany is the most instructive example. Even Germany, the country most celebrated for monetary discipline and whose Bundesbank is often considered the gold standard of central banking, saw the Deutsche mark lose roughly 76% of its purchasing power between 1971 and 2002, when it was absorbed into the euro. Germany’s government debt stood at 63.5% of GDP in 2025, making it one of the least-indebted G7 economies. Despite that record, Germany still has the highest average wages among the major eurozone economies. Yet even those wages, at $69,433 annually, remain well below the U.S. figure of $82,933.

In short, while the U.S. government’s legendary debt is not good and inflation has taken a bite out of purchasing power, all countries have inflation, and all currencies have lost significant value over the past 50 years. The U.S. dollar is no closer to collapse than the euro, the pound, or any other major currency. On the contrary, the dollar remains the world’s currency of choice.

America remains the world’s largest economy by GDP and the eighth-richest country by GDP per capita, while maintaining one of the lowest inflation rates and unemployment rates among major economies.

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Rampant Kleptocracy Feeds Wealth Inequality In A Crumbling American Empire

The state of the American economy is something that is increasingly on the minds of Americans these days. With life getting more expensive millions of Americans are feeling the squeeze getting tighter and tighter. And it seems with every passing day that the so called “leaders” of the American empire further demonstrate their disconnect from the fiscal reality of the average citizen.

The Grand-Canyon-sized wealth gap in this nation is staggering, with a classism characterized by despotic decadence on the one hand and dire desperation on the other, with most people falling into the latter category while the former flaunt their obscene opulence.

This of course isn’t just prevalent among the political predators, but throughout the entirety of the parasitic one percent, political and cultural elitists stretching from the halls of Congress to corporate power centers, to the Hollywood Hills.

A prime example of this being the annual Met Gala earlier this month. While politically unimportant, the cult of celebrity was on full display as these supercilious snobs laud over themselves for the world to see in grandiose fashion, grandstanding with multimillion dollar outfits and accessories. Meanwhile much of the population struggle to make ends meet. 

And let us be clear, this is not a condemnation of the rich for the sake of being rich. Rather, it is a condemnation of a society in which self proclaimed elitists enrich themselves through the institutionalized exploitation of the average person, profiting from systems deliberately designed to oppress the many for the benefit of the few.

This permeates throughout the entirety of America’s power structure, observable on federal, state, and even local levels, as demonstrated by The Free Thought Project’s recent reporting on the continued criminalization of homelessness.

Fiscal recklessness is running rampant through American legislature. As recently reported by The Daily Economy, the US debt has now crossed 100% of GDP for the first time since the end of World War II.

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A Visual Breakdown Of Who Owns America’s Wealth

There are two types of households in the U.S.: the rich half and the poorer half.

And the data is quite striking in this regard.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, breaks down America’s wealth (the total net worth of all U.S. households) by wealth percentile, and lists the number of households in each percentile.

Data for this chart is sourced from the Federal Reserve as of Q3, 2024.

For reference, the total net worth of all U.S. households is close to $160 trillion.

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Seattle Economic Crisis: Proof That Democrat Wealth Taxes Lead To Disaster

To look at the Pacific Northwest today one would never know that 25 years ago the region was an economic powerhouse at the forefront of technology and business innovation.  At the time Portland and Seattle were known for constant rain as well as raining cash, and the “millionaire density” of the Seattle area was at historic highs.  The tech boom and international trade with Asia had created a Silicon Valley of the northern coast.  

Companies like Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon established corporate offices and generated tens of thousands of jobs, and many of those jobs were considered high income.  People can debate the overall effects of the population surge to the region; there are many who would argue that Washington and Oregon were better off when they were considered backwoods fishing and lumber states.  That said, it’s undeniable that for a time the Northwest was one of the most desirable and lucrative places to live in the US.  

That’s all gone now.  The wealthy are leaving Seattle like it’s a leper colony and all that’s left are millions of broke activists, poverty stricken residents and illegal immigrants.  Some blame the constant riots or the steady stream of welfare recipients. Others say that the draconian covid mandates caused people to jump ship.  However, a primary factor in businesses (and money) leaving the city was the institution of a progressive “Payroll Expense Tax”.  

The PET is a quarterly tax approved by the Seattle City Council in 2020 in the middle of the Covid hysteria.  It increases taxes on businesses depending on how many employees they hire and how much their employees get paid.  In other words, it punishes companies that hire more people and pay them a good salary.  The conditions of the PET are very similar to what Democrats say they want for their “Wealth Tax” – An extra tax on top earners and large companies beyond the income tax.  

Democrats were high on their own supply in the early 2020s and in their fervor to destroy conservatives they instituted every suicidal policy imaginable, from defunding police to near-zero prosecution for property theft under $1000.  It’s not surprising that wealth taxes were established at the same time to “stick it to the capitalists”.  What they seem to have forgotten, though, is that communist tactics don’t work if people and businesses are able to walk away, and that’s exactly what has happened in Seattle.

Larger businesses are packing up and leaving the Northwest as quickly as they arrived.  Amazon, Meta, Google and Expedia are the most prominent examples of companies exiting the Seattle labor market and hiring elsewhere to avoid the Payroll Tax, but there are numerous others. 

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Is Science Rigged for the Rich?

A recent paper published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, titled “Access to Opportunity in the Sciences: Evidence From the Nobel Laureates,” found that 67 percent of science Nobel Prize winners have “fathers from above the 90th income percentile in their birth country.” The authors, affiliated with Imperial College London, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, claim that their paper reveals extreme inequality in the science world and suggests that undiscovered geniuses from poor backgrounds never had the chance to show what they could do for humanity.

The study received considerable press attention, including a piece in The Guardian claiming that it showed “a lot of talent wasted…and breakthroughs lost.”

“The Nobel prizes highlight that we have a biased system in science and little is being done to even out the playing field,” wrote scientist Kate Shaw in Physics World. “We should not accept that such a tiny demographic are born ‘better’ at science than anyone else.” 

This study contains several statistical and conceptual errors, making its findings meaningless. It provides no evidence that unequal opportunity in science limits human progress. 

For starters, how did the authors determine who was “born better” and thus had a better chance of winning a Nobel Prize? The study examined what their fathers did for a living. It found that since 1901, people with scientists for fathers had 150 times the chance of winning a science Nobel than the average person. 

Scientists earn more on average, which allegedly shows that coming from a wealthier family gave them a boost. But it’s common sense that the children of scientists will have an advantage in winning Nobel Prizes. Children of successful people often excel in the same fields as their parents. The size of the advantage may seem surprising, but this is typical when you look at the extremes of the bell curve. Even small initial advantages can result in extreme differences in outcome.

Suppose instead of Nobel Prizes in science we were talking about an Olympic gold medal for the 100-meter dash. Suppose everyone in the world got to participate. There would be thousands of people a step or two behind the winner.

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Money Is Power, And The Global Balance Of Power Is Rapidly Shifting In Favor Of The Ultra-Wealthy Elite

If  you have enough money, you can buy just about anything.  And when you are in a position where you can buy just about anything, you wield an enormous amount of raw power.  Today, our world is completely and utterly dominated by those at the very top of the economic pyramid.  Those in the top one percent of the top one percent are pretty much able to do whatever they want, and the rest of us are pretty much powerless to stop them.  Unfortunately, the gap between the ultra-wealthy elite and the rest of us just continues to get even larger.  Last year, the total wealth of the world’s millionaires reached a staggering 86.8 trillion dollars…

The world has never had so many rich people and their investments in soaring stock markets have made them wealthier than ever recorded, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The number of “high net worth individuals” (HNWI) — defined as people with liquid assets of at least $1 million — rose by 5.1 percent last year to 22.8 million, according to consulting firm Capgemini.

Their total wealth reached $86.8 trillion in 2023, a 4.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to the annual World Wealth Report.

Meanwhile, 5 billion people have gotten poorer since the start of the pandemic…

Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost 5 billion people globally have become poorer.

How much power do the hundreds of millions of people around the world that are living on less than two dollars a day have compared to the billionaires in the western world that are constantly making headlines?

The truth is that they run the world and the rest of us are just living in it.

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