Interestingly, Taiwan has one of the lowest big Mac prices but that doesn't really correlate with their purchasing power

It's not the same principle because it's always one Big Mac. All the dollar stores are one dollar and up stores now.

Far too coherent, this was definitely written by an intern not DJT himself. ;-)

Not NEARLY enough ALL CAPS

I dunno, I wouldn't take a bet on wether the US will outlive McDonald's or vice versa.

Will they be sued out of existence after their meat substitute mushroom burger left in the sun for too long comes alive an eats 9 customers and and a minivan?

Idk if I'm going to pick a fight with a restaurant chain that can harness that kind of firepower.

Also, the gold standard was based on trust too. You trusted that the government would honour your request to exchange dollars for gold. There was nothing magical about being on the gold standard.

Money is just IOUs created by the government. The government uses them to pay for goods and services it wants. If the government wants someone to guard a building, they pay in IOUs. Then, every year, the government taxes everybody in the country and demands that they return a certain number of government IOUs to the country. It's this obligation to pay taxes that gives their IOUs their value.

The person who was paid to guard a building is left holding a pile of IOUs. Fundamentally, they're worthless. But, there are other people in the country who have to pay taxes and aren't doing jobs for the government. So, the guy with the IOUs goes to the farmer and says "I know you're going to need to pay taxes and don't have any IOUs, I'll trade you some of my IOUs for some of your vegetables". After that exchange the farmer has enough IOUs to pay the government at tax time, and the guard still has enough to pay his own taxes.

This comment actually made me think and look it up. I never thought about this. Why is gold valuable?

Yeah you were basically right. Because societies decided it would be. I mean gold has some practical applications but nothing that would justify it's price.

First link I found says this:

• Gold's value is ultimately a social c- onstruction; its worth is sustained by ourcollective agreement about its importance and our belief in its future value.

• Gold's physical properties—its lustrous quality, relative scarcity, durability, and difficulty of extraction—reinforce and justify its perceived value.

• Unlike other precious metals, gold strikes a balance of being rare enough to be precious but abundant enough to serve as a practical medium of exchange.

So I guess rare enough yet abundand enough and durable enough.

Wild tbh

Even so, in a scenario where all the currencies fall apart, Gold and Silver are very probable to become the basis of wealth.
Nowadays, stuff like SiIicon and Copper are pretty high value (and similarly, Germanium), but they really depend a lot upon hard to measure purity which goes with high-technology.
So Gold and Silver, which are easier to determine with lower technology (unless someone uses high-technology to spoof them) and also easier to make into useful products, will tend to hold intrinsic value.

Value of iron and others, break down due to abundance, while steel depends upon technology and expertise.

The word "fluctuating" implies the price of gold has been going up and down. That is not what has happened since the Commander-In-Thief took office.

Market price of one ounce of gold over the last five years:

Yeah my first thought was "dang that's neat how do I get the coin?" and I don't even like Big Macs.

Edit: they're available on eBay for $10 or less, some below $5.

You don't have to eat it, just like you didn't have to exchange your money for gold.

You can pay me for you not to eat it. Thats fine

You don't have to like them. You just need to believe that there is someone that believes there's someone that likes them. Simple.

It wouldn't even need to be all that good. It's being exchanged by a minimum wage teenage employee, whom I PROMISE YOU does not give a shit.

I've seen people spend that hollywood prop money at mcdonalds. The kind that says "this is not valid currency" printed in decent size text.

So the counterfit doesn't need to be exact.

Isn't fiat currency functionally based on taxation and the value represented by the tax?

We have communal effort, we tax the community to pay for that effort to pay the workers, and the value created by that labor is thus the value of the currency.

The work makes debt, we tax to pay down that debt. The currency represents the movement of the value between parties.

So long as movement is sustained we have value that backs the currency.

Thus so long as we have community we have value.