Sound Money is better than Fiat Money for the average citizen.

The risk of hyperinflation by a corrupt government exists when using a fiat money system. The inability of a government to restrain itself from doing so, or not having a proper system of checks and balances in place to prevent it is a different debate. I don't see how there is a difference between Zimbabwe with paper money backed by gold, and simply having the paper money backed by Zimbabwe. What is to stop an unscrupulous country from simply printing more of the paper money with "backed by gold" written on it? Then there isn't enough gold to be redeemed by all certificate holders. I'm not sure what caused the housing bubble, and that is a different debate, but I do know about savings and large purchases. The average price of a home in the United States during 2013 was $320,900[1] and the average yearly salary was $44,888.16[2]. That is seven years of saving assuming the average citizen puts every penny toward a house. Most of that yearly salary is going to go to rent (since they don't have a home), food, gasoline, medicines, taxes, etc. Will they have a separate savings fund like a 401k in order to retire? There have been cases in Utah where getting the homeless into public housing saved money because they didn't end up in either jail or emergency room. They were able to get off drugs and become productive members of society.[3] There are clear benefits to home ownership versus homelessness and having to save up a lot of money is something that isn't always feasible. I know it is a bit of a stretch, but there are also benefits to owning over renting, though not as clear as not owning a home at all.[4] The average citizen benefits from home ownership, if nothing else they own the property and could rent out their house to someone else for a profit or sell it to someone else. If saving for a home, a lot of money is out of circulation and sitting in a bank account (while the bank loans this money out to others). Sure the mortgage costs more money in the long run, but you get to enjoy perks of the home sooner and save money that otherwise would have gone to rent and the landlord. As stated last round, minor inflation the mortgage debt gets reduced as well and it works out for the average working family. Owning your home is a big part of the "American Dream." I did not mean to imply that the living standard increased because of the current fiat system. I simply wanted to point out that the living standard had increased significantly since 1913, for technological or other reasons. This is in spite of the value of the dollar falling 95%. I am not attempting to challenge Mr. Wood's premises, only interpret them. I read the entirety of Chapter 6 and could only find this: "Whether a system that has caused the dollar to lose 95 percent of its value is really the best of all possible systems" on page 109 of his book "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed ...". From page 151 of the same book he writes "But when Americans had a legitimate commodity standard, they had a money that held its value. In fact, it actually gained in value. An item that cost $100 in 1820 would have cost only $63.02 in 1913." From this interpretation I made the comments in my second paragraph during round 2. I freely admit that due to the nature of these debates, I did not have much time to fully digest the text and my interpretation may be flawed. I must have missed where he says exactly how he reaches his "-95% value" conclusion. From my previous quote regarding page 151 he is says that the dollar increases in value when an item costing $100, costs $63.02 after a period of time. This implies that the dollar loses value when an item costing $63.02, costs $100 after a period of time. So if the value of the dollar has fallen 95% something that used to cost $100 now costs $195. So when prices fall, the value of the dollar goes up, when prices go up, the value of the dollar falls. During the Great Depression "consumer prices fell 24.4 percent." [5] So by Mr. Wood's own logic, the value of the dollar rose during the Great Depression. I am merely trying to say that the "value" of the dollar has a negative correlation to the quality of life of the average citizen. I am not implying that fiat currency caused quality of life to go up. Neither am I saying that quality of life would have gone up as much or more under a commodity currency. I only brought up the Great Depression because Woods does, a lot. I don't think it is emotion or conjecture to say that the average citizen suffered during the Great Depression.[6] I am sorry I did not provide a source for my previous statements regarding the Great Depression. I incorrectly assumed it was common knowledge. I also am not implying that the Gold Standard was the cause of the Great Depression nor that fiat currency helped the United States out of it. I was merely trying to relate Mr. Wood's "value" of the dollar to the average citizen's standard of living. If the standard of living has increased and the value of the dollar has decreased, then would it not be in the interest of the average citizen for the value of the dollar to decrease another 95% over the course of 100 years? I fundamentally do not see the difference between inflating a fiat currency so you have billions of dollars, or increasing the value a commodity so much that you have to exchange fractions of ounces or grains of rare metal as currency. Do you just keep switching currency systems when it is no longer divisible? That doesn't seem very dependable. In the case of crypto currency like BitCoins you end up with those who invest early to get easy access to coins which kind of sounds like a weird ponzi scheme to me, but I am not well read on BitCoins. I don't think dividing or switching the currency makes it dependable. Who decides which new metal becomes currency? What happens to all the people with paper saying it is backed by the old metal? Maybe you end up with a scenario where gold, silver, copper, etc. are all different fractions of currency, but that isn't consistent due to supply and demand of each metal. In comparison, fiat would have far less transaction costs because you wouldn't have to convert. If money increases in value over time due to prices lowering, then it makes sense to hold onto your money and wait for it to go up in value. If money decreases in value over time due to prices raising, then it makes sense to spend your money on material resources or goods. This spending of money translates into the exchange of goods and services among people. I don't think a case can be made that commodity backed currency is superior to currency backed by a government. Citizens care about the purchasing power of the currency and how it lets them exchange their labor into goods and services.[7] It makes no difference if I make $100,000 a year or $10,000 a year if the price of a house has the same ratio, $500,000 or $50,000 for example. The fundamental choice is between whether private enterprise(commodity) or the federal government(fiat) should control the money supply. Both have a risk of corruption, but a democratic government is supposed to look out in the best interests of the people, and voting is done to keep it that way. Private enterprise is under no such obligations, so the government-backed currency is the better choice for average citizens. This was my first debate, so thanks for reading! I tried reading as many tips as I could to improve beforehand but nothing beats experience. 1. https://www.census.gov... 2. http://www.ssa.gov... 3. http://www.motherjones.com... 4. https://www.incharge.org... 5. http://www.econlib.org... 6. http://www.hillcrestweb.com... 7. https://en.wikipedia.org...