The money I saved as a child would buy one picogram of gold today • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by jonhohle » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

Certhas wrote: post #10

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

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.

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

#22

Post by renewiltord » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

Zeihan in tears. I really enjoy his description of geopolitics, but the man definitely overestimates Argentina repeatedly for no bloody reason.

When I was a child, I saved a little of my allowance to start with, but then rapidly realized that every year I was blowing away (in earnings) my savings from the previous year. Soon my porn and bootleg music high-school business was beating all the savings of the previous year. Then my ad fraud "business" plus my fake reviews "business" was beating that.

I dropped all of that stuff, went to uni for other things and then eventually started engineering later in life than most people and the pattern repeated in earnings. Through sheer luck I happened to make choices that aimed at growth rather than savings.

Pure savings are over-rated. You should hold nearly everything in inflation-protected assets. And loads of these are crazy liquid. Plus, I have friends with whom I have a de-facto liquidity pool. It's sort of a liquidity insurance mechanism: we'll just help each other over temporary liquidity humps.

One of my friends had to leave the US temporarily because of a green card processing delay due to COVID and he knew that I'd cover his mortgage if he needed me to. Helps you sail closer to the wind knowing that only broad-based economic failure can hurt.

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

#23

Post by Retric » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

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…

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There are two ways of looking at money. In the case of physical tokens you have just as many before and after inflation so that’s not theft.

The other way is to consider it as an abstraction of value independent of these tokens. But who then pays to maintain the system, prevent counterfeits, and issue replacements for used tokens etc? It’s the government that issues these tokens and as such the loss of value over time is simply a payment for use of the system. You might disagree with how large the fee is, but it’s a medium of exchange so you can trade your tokens for something else.

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

#24

Post by staticautomatic » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

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.

FYI I down-voted you because making a bare assertion and then saying “prove me wrong” is hostile and intellectually lazy.

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

#25

Post by UncleMeat » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

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.

An important question is "what is inflation?"

A ton of the discussion of inflation ties it in a 1:1 way to money printing. Like the government says "I'd like some more money please", prints money, and this evenly inflates the price of every good and "steals" from people's bank accounts. While this can be a component of inflation, the truth is much more complex.

Looking at the published CPI numbers it becomes extremely clear that inflation is extremely varied. Natural gas way way up. Medical commodities up only a small amount. Prices can rise for an absolutely enormous number of different reasons and the price of a good going up obviously cannot be considered "theft" in the abstract. The people who insist that governments are unjust if they allow any inflation above 0% are being unreasonable, in my opinion.

That said, it is also the case that public policy, especially public policy in authoritarian or failed states, can cause a currency to collapse and wipe out any wealth their citizens hold in that currency. But I'm not even sure I'd call this "theft". It is a different sort of abuse entirely and it comes in many more forms than just devalued currency.

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

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#27

Post by jhgb » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #21

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.

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?

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

#28

Post by unlog » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

innagadadavida wrote: post #5

Are there any kids book that explain these money concepts to elementary school kids? I feel one the big failings of the school system is that these are not taught early on and instead a lot of time is spent teaching things that kids will never use in their lives.

Reminds me of this excellent video https://youtu.be/HLIJkmy3vy8 it's in Spanish, he tells the story of explaining a financial system crash to his daughter. Probably has subtitles in English, I recommend it

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

#29

Post by renewiltord » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

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.

MMT-caused inflation just an effect of an alternative to taxation and is an effective means to keep spending moving. Like any other outcome of monetary policy it has winners and losers

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

#30

Post by ghaff » Sun, Apr 17, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

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).

The ostensible reason for the coin shortage was COVID-related supply chains. Stores were also trying to minimize handling of cash especially early-on in the pandemic.

This is overlaid with the fact that, in the US:

1. A lot of people (though certainly not everyone) don't use a lot of cash these days

2. Coin denominations have basically been unchanged since I was born--which was... not recently. So you have lower denomination coins that cost more to make than they're worth.