Priced in Gold, American Wages Are Dismal
Forbes published an eye-opening op/ed by Keith Weiner of the Gold Standard Institute today. Weiner first looks at the government’s historical data on the costs of consumer goods and employee salaries. He then looks at the same data in terms of gold ounces, revealing that American workers are laboring longer for dramatically less pay than their parents. Not only that, but their purchasing power has also plummeted since the 1960s, before Nixon completely severed the US dollar from the gold standard.
“By switching to gold, we can measure both wages and prices on an absolute scale—in ounces—and we can make precise comparisons. To convert the price of anything to gold, just divide the price by the current gold price. For example, in 2011 if a big-screen TV was $785, then divide that by the gold price of that year; the television set cost half an ounce of gold.
The bottom line is that, in terms of gold, wages have fallen by about 87 percent. To get a stronger sense of what that means, consider that back in 1965, the minimum wage was 71 ounces of gold per year. In 2011, the senior engineer earned the equivalent of 63 ounces in gold. So, measured in gold, we see that senior engineers now earn less than what unskilled laborers earned back in 1965.”
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