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     8 years ago 

    Well, here's the thing. Any fiat currency is more a symbol than an actual thing. Fiat currency is money that is printed at will, with nothing to back it other than the government's promise, plus the theoretical concept that it represents the productivity of a country and that's what you are accepting when you take a dollar bill in exchange for a service or a product. Around 60-70 years ago, currencies were actually backed by gold, silver or some other item of intrinsic value. So for every dollar that was printed and put in circulation, there was a corresponding chunk of gold or silver stored away some place like Fort Knox. Nixon fully removed that, and the US's currency became a piece of paper backed by nothing else than the government's policy to make good on that debt, plus the willing acceptance of most of the rest of the world into that illusion. So it is worth something to you when you earn it, and to anyone else when you use it to purchase something. But what you can purchase with it fluctuates constantly. And could go down to zero very easily if there is a collapse of the government or any significant unrest. So it's not really money, it's government debt. As opposed to an equivalent amount of gold, which has been accepted as money for most of known history on account of its scarcity and, I guess, how amazing it looks. If you had converted all your dollars into gold the day before Nixon took us off the standard, and held on to that gold, you'd be holding on to an insane amount of dollars today. Whereas if you held on to the actual dollars in paper currency, you wouldn't have much to show for it, and in fact, you would have lost most of the money since the purchasing power of $100 today is a pittance compared to those same $100 back when they were still backed by gold.

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