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The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

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Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#41

Post by shadowgovt »

Taek wrote: post #12
Certhas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a childhood lesson you don't need crazy inflation for this to hold true though. Anything that takes more than a few of months to save up to just doesn't make sense as a kid. Your disposable income goes up by factors of ten every few years. You have 2$ to spend at 5, 20$ at 10, 200$ at 15. Then it slows down but you might still get to 2000$ at 25. Saving as a kid really never seemed worth it to me.

It's about the lesson more than anything else. I really want my kids to learn how to save and be well practiced at it, even though the utility function doesn't make a ton of sense.

But it's a lesson in the same category as "You'd better learn how to do equations on paper and long form because you won't always have a calculator with you." If the underpinning is obvious bunk, it does nothing to reinforce the desired behavior and can in fact be counterproductive.

The reason to do long form math on paper is to get a feeling for the mechanics of math so that you can extrapolate it to more complicated math. The reason to save is that there are minimum barriers to cost for investiture in capital, and capital pays dividends and grows in a way consumables don't (unless it doesn't! Nobody wins in a civil war).

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#42

Post by bombingwinger »

Certhas wrote: post #8
t43562 wrote: post #3

I remember my dad encouraging me to save my dollars and not spend them on choc-99 double ice-creams ($2.13). These were soft whip ice-creams with 2 cadbury's flake chocolates stuck in the side and they seemed like the closest thing to heaven on earth to me. What my dad said seemed logical though and I saved. When I was 16 I had a holiday job that earned me many ice-cream-worths but I kept it - didn't buy a bicycle or…

As a childhood lesson you don't need crazy inflation for this to hold true though. Anything that takes more than a few of months to save up to just doesn't make sense as a kid. Your disposable income goes up by factors of ten every few years. You have 2$ to spend at 5, 20$ at 10, 200$ at 15. Then it slows down but you might still get to 2000$ at 25. Saving as a kid really never seemed worth it to me.

It’d make more sense if your parents directed your savings to the stock market or in some other asset. Saving by itself is worthless if you can’t put the money to work.

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#43

Post by shadowgovt »

xiphias2 wrote: post #6
t43562 wrote: post #3

I remember my dad encouraging me to save my dollars and not spend them on choc-99 double ice-creams ($2.13). These were soft whip ice-creams with 2 cadbury's flake chocolates stuck in the side and they seemed like the closest thing to heaven on earth to me. What my dad said seemed logical though and I saved. When I was 16 I had a holiday job that earned me many ice-cream-worths but I kept it - didn't buy a bicycle or…

I did the same thing for many years, until in 2013 the Cyprus bailouts woke me up...at that point I went all in on Bitcoin out of anger of the banking system, and haven't changed anything since.

I hope this works out for you in the long term; BTC isn't the most stable platform, but it could certainly be more stable than some national currencies.

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#44

Post by [deleted] »

zmgsabst wrote: post #20
Certhas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up the definitions: Theft: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property. Inflation: a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services. There you go, proved you wrong.

In definition 1: > as by embezzlement In definition 2: > attributed to … volume of money and credit We’d be able to conclude that “inflation is theft” from noting that inflation is driven by “printing money”, whether paper or credit, and that the benefits illicitly go to those in control of the financial system to the detriment of others — which the other poster would likely characterize as “embezzlement”. So you pro…

[deleted]

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#45

Post by jonhohle »

jhgb wrote: post #27
jonhohle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree that it’s not, by definition, theft. It is, however, an obscured tax on savers, a transfer of wealth from lender to debtor. At least in the US inflation is the result of decoupling dollars from gold and the direct theft of gold and silver from the citizens by the government.

> a transfer of wealth from borrowers to debtors What's the difference between a borrower and a debtor?

Sorry, s/borrower/lender

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#46

Post by kingcharles »

t43562 wrote: post #3

I remember my dad encouraging me to save my dollars and not spend them on choc-99 double ice-creams ($2.13). These were soft whip ice-creams with 2 cadbury's flake chocolates stuck in the side and they seemed like the closest thing to heaven on earth to me. What my dad said seemed logical though and I saved. When I was 16 I had a holiday job that earned me many ice-cream-worths but I kept it - didn't buy a bicycle or…

Funny side note: the State of Illinois spent a decent amount of public funds trying to decide whether to charge me with $100 trillion in currency fraud. The state crime lab said the currency I owned was the "most sophisticated piece of currency forgery" they had ever encountered.

It was a single (real) $100 trillion bill from Zimbabwe that I carried in my wallet for fun. I assume they thought for some reason it was US dollars?

https://www.banknoteworld.com/zimbabwe-currency/100-trillion...

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#47

Post by slg »

treeman79 wrote: post #11
slg wrote: post #9

Argentina has experienced multiple rounds of hyperinflation due to failed monetary policy. Saying this story is a "lesson about the power of inflation" is like saying "the sun is hot". Yes, it certainly is, but it is so far beyond normal definitions of "hot" that people will have a hard time understanding it. This is more a story about the failures of Argentina's governments over the last 50 years than a story about…

There are a lot of people that think we can print spend endless amounts of money without consequences. Heck an alarming amount of people don’t understand that bonds need to be paid back.

I made that comment because I know people are going to use the linked example of what happened in Argentina as the predicted fate of what will happen in the US. That seems to be what you are implying here by drawing parallels between the two. But I simply want to make it clear that the US is at 8% inflation for the last year while Argentina spent decades with the average annual inflation rate measured in the hundreds. The two aren't close to the same.

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#48

Post by memish »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #7
t43562 wrote: post #3

I remember my dad encouraging me to save my dollars and not spend them on choc-99 double ice-creams ($2.13). These were soft whip ice-creams with 2 cadbury's flake chocolates stuck in the side and they seemed like the closest thing to heaven on earth to me. What my dad said seemed logical though and I saved. When I was 16 I had a holiday job that earned me many ice-cream-worths but I kept it - didn't buy a bicycle or…

Quoted post unavailable.

It's a hidden, regressive tax.

Re: The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today

#50

Post by raunak »

clamprecht wrote: post #13

I'm from the US but I lived in Argentina for about 5 years (2013-2018). It was a great lesson, and I'm seeing things in the US now that I used to see in Argentina. At the bank recently, they had a sign about the national shortage of coins. That was common in Argentina. Sizes of products getting smaller in order to keep the price the same - "inflacion escondido" (hidden inflation).

Shrinkflation
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