From my understanding, remove from the gold standard just allows government to arbitrarily make up the value of the now fiat currency, which is why we now struggle with inflation and soaring debt.
It seems obvious that you’d want your dollar to theoretically be fixed to another medium with a readily appraisable value simply to maintain stability and prevent government corruption through manipulation of the monetary supply.
But then again, I’m no economist.
In: Economics
Well, in Americas case it was because the Nixon government was very corrupt and they wanted our economy to be based on the value of oil instead of gold because they were heavily invested in oil. Unlike gold, oil is consumed and was required for the basic function of the world, so it has a decent case for why it would be a good thing to base a currency off of…except then you have to do a lot of nasty things to control the world’s oil supply so you don’t get outcompeted by people who have more or similar oil reserves (See: every war the united states has been involved in since this happened).
And then there’s the whole thing were it also incentivizes the suppression of better energy technologies, promotes pollution and fuels climate change denial…I’m not sure if getting off the gold standard was good. It very well may have been, but getting onto the petrodollar was unequivocally Not.
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