as the value of the dollar that’s changing, what people think it is now and what they think’s going to happen in the future. Gold keeps its value, not perfectly, but better than anything else on this earth. So when you have stable money, you get a more productive investment, more growth. History shows it time and time again. But one other thing I think that has held down cash wages is our crazy health care systems, where, more and more, we pay more and more each year for insurance. And when employees buy insurance, that means less cash wages for their workers. And the explosive growth of premiums in the last 30 years I think goes hand-in-hand with the fact that health insurance is counted as part of your compensation, but it sure doesn’t translate into cash into your pocket. Q: That’s a very good point. Let’s talk about the crazy interest-rate regime we’ve had for the past decade. Steve, I know you’re familiar with the Austrian economic theory that artificially low interest rates leads to malinvestment, and they lead to capital being poorly allocated. When I look around the last 10 years and I see things like a trillion- dollar growth in college lending; you see credit-card debts over a trillion dollars in America, you see auto loan debts over a trillion dollars in America – the growth in these kinds of consumer loans have been enormous. You also see of course the explosive growth of government debts. So we’ve gone from $4 trillion, $6 trillion in government debts held by the public to almost $15 trillion in the last 10 years.
STEVE FORBES: It’s amazing the seeming coincidences of what has happened to growth when we went off the gold standard – the Bretton Woods monetary systems, they called it then. Some would say it’s just a coincidence. I think it’s a prime cause. The way you move ahead in this world in terms of progress and a higher standard of living is by investment. And if you have an unstable money, money that fluctuates in value, you don’t get as much productive investment as you do when you have stable money. That’s why today in the currency markets, the volume is over $5 trillion a day. All that brain power just going to trading on currencies. So, yes. I think the thing to remember about a gold standard is that gold is like a ruler... like 60 minutes in an hour, 12 inches in a foot. And when the price of gold changes, it’s not the value of gold changing so much For the full Investor Hour show with Buck Sexton, Porter Stansberry, and Steve Forbes, click here to sign up for the Investor Hour notification list. Like American Consequences , it’s 100% free. Each week, you’ll receive new show updates, previews, and access to transcripts and show notes. Whether it’s about investing... business... politics... or a controversial social issue... you’ll get the unfiltered information from behind the scenes.
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