We are inundated daily with exhortations by TV pitchmen to buy gold, buy gold against the threat of inflation, buy gold against the fall in the currency, buy gold because it’s the safe thing to do. Gold is now selling for about $1,000 per troy ounce, as opposed to its historic price of about $20 per troy ounce, a price that obtained from 1774 to 1930. President Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard and the price after that was $35 per troy ounce until President Nixon allowed the price to be determined by the market. The best thing about gold, besides being a very useful industrial metal, is that the discovery of gold in the 19th century in Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa and Brazil brought vast numbers of people to areas of the world they would not ordinarily have ventured into, and stayed there, many of them, creating new towns that either grew into cities or vanished as soon as the gold ran out.
To anyone wishing to compare the cost of $1,000 gold to the price at any time in the past, click here. (H/T Canoneer #4, The Belmont Club). According to one measurement, Babe Ruth’s 1931 salary of $80,000 was worth, in today’s dollars, $1,000,000. By other measurements it was worth twice to three times that, depending upon which index you use. By this measure, $20 gold was worth, in today’s dollars, either $250, $500 or $750, again depending on the index used. Does that mean today’s gold is overpriced and the hucksters are taking advantage of the current economic climate? Maybe, but comparing the price that obtained from Roosevelt to Nixon, the 1933 price of $35 was worth, in today’s dollars, about $450, $900, and $1,350, depending on which index is used. Read the whole thing and you will be just as confused as I am. In any event, whatever the cost, gold is not important in the long run. What matter if you die with gold but have lost your eternal soul.
The mighty Croesus rubbed his hands
He had the gold he had the lands
He had it made despite the Persian threat
The oracle divinely said
An empire would soon be dead
Poor Croesus ended up with deep regret
For gold alone will not delay
Thy destiny for e’en a day
And those who think it will are soon dismayed
To find their gold is just a weight
Upon the soul as worthless freight
When God in all his glory is displayed
So search you rivers, creeks and fields
For autumn reds and aurum yields
If lucky you may find a grain or two
But gold lies not beneath the ground
The truest gold is surely found
Inside of God and deep inside inside of you