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Comment by fuzzfactor | Hacker News Reader

>a gold standard will limit the money supply.

I think there's some truth to this.

And if you're willing to accept it for what it is, ask yourself about your own supply of money, what it is and where it comes from.

What are the current limitations if not gold any more?

And it hasn't been gold in quite some time, not just theoretically for a while.

How has that "unlimited" money supply worked out ever since?

Is there any other bottleneck somewhere that maybe is holding back that limitless supply of money from ending up in your pocket worse than if it was gold, which we know has always been so hard to come by that most people have never had significant amounts whatsoever since the beginning of time?

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> How has that "unlimited" money supply worked out ever since?

It works very well when your currency is the world's reserve currency. You get way more latitude for printing money with much lower inflation vs some isolated economy win no deep reservoirs of unused currency in "reserves".

If the US loses the status of being the dominant reserve currency, the link between money supply and inflation will become much stronger. The USD is currently backed by the US hegemony , of which foreign policy is a big part of.

> What are the current limitations if not gold any more?

Inflation on one side, employment rates on the other. It's literally in most central banks' headline policy goals.

> How has that "unlimited" money supply worked out ever since?

Pretty well, seeing how it's largely coincided with unprecedented growth in living standards and helped us avoid what could have been a repeat of the 1930s due to Covid's impact on economies, among other things.

> How has that "unlimited" money supply worked out ever since?

Judging that it's been 100 years since the last depression, pretty well.

You're right, of course there are all kinds of of American families who have not suffered any downturns, some going back more than 100 years, without the "Great Depression" even slowing them down much.

But they're in the same boat as everyone else now, as far as guessing how many years til the next depression, whether or not it is overdue, by how much, and what happens this time.

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