I’m not an economist, and definitely not a gold bug. I mostly reference that website as confirmation that something really did shift in the American economy. I don’t necessarily think it’s related to the gold standard.
I think of it more like a tipping point, the wheels of capitalism started mining the prosperity of the American citizens faster than it was being produced. The harder we’ve worked to try and catch up, the more wealth was generated to take away. Everything is pushed to the point of failure. The entire economy runs on borrowing money, so there’s no incentive to have Americans save anything ever.
Behind everything that’s causing people misery there is an industry making record profits. As time goes on the machine just seems to get more cruel and more efficient. We’re all one healthcare disaster away from losing everything.
I definitely don’t think that’s the fault of the gold standard. I blame the Cold war. At some point we decided that capitalism is defined as anything that makes money and communism is anything the government does to help people. Capitalism is always good, communism is always bad. And here we are 50 some years later.
The people living in tents exist as a warning to the workforce. Keep working for whatever you’re offered, or you will lose everything. You will lose your health care, you will lose your home, you will lose anything you have managed to save or build and be despised by society for having a moral failing. Rent keeps going up, food prices keep going up, but there’s no money in the record profit producing budget to give you a cost of living raise.
Anyway, I think the website is a good tool for demonstrating how the world no longer works to benefit people. But I blame the Cold war rather than the gold standard.