I know many people, primarily conservatives, want to see the gold standard brought back, and I do agree that we need to have some type of commodity backing our money, but why just gold? Why not silver, platinum, and other commodities as well? There are a number of valuable metals, and other things that could back currency.
Normally when you're speaking to a reasonable person on the subject they will concede this, normally when I have discussed it with people I usually bring up the fact that gold actually has practical usage like for computer parts or just electronics in general like I said when it's a reasonable person they usually say that a metal that does not have any real practical use could be used in it's place and it's just the concept of managing the monetary supply which is the goal, others though simply don't really care and don't know what they are talking about but I'll admit the former tends to be more prevalent. I do however disagree with the gold standard in theory as well as even on here I've also even often defended the federal reserve even though I do understand it has many flaws but still believe our current monetary system along with the federal reserve is still more favorable to the gold standard as many advocates even admit it has flaws but they in turn like me believe that their system is the least flawed out of all others we've tried.
Gold has always been the standard because it doesn't deteriorate and other than jewelry, it is not consumed for other uses. Money is nothing more than a mutually agreed storage of previous economic activity. If your money is deteriorating (by natural or political processes) the value of stored economic activity is lost. Copper, oil and grain are used widely throughout the economy.
Fiat currency enables the banking system to socialize its losses onto taxpayers and consumers through inflation. The reason is because the fractional reserve system inevitably runs into crises from time to time. Instead of the banks failing, they will be bailed out by inflating the money supply (either directly by the Fed or by Congress increasing debt spending that will be financed by inflation). The upward pressure on prices created by expanding the money supply disproportionately harms poor people because it acts as a flat tax on all goods and services. It also harms the middle class by eroding the purchasing power of their savings. That forces both classes to have to go into more debt, which obviously benefits the banking system. Banks, as you probably know, are overwhelmingly represented by the disgustingly wealthy folks. The wealthy don't have to worry about the inflation because larger government spending typically benefits them the most - either through taxpayer funded subsidies, bailouts, Wall Street banks buying gov't debt to collecting interest on the bonds, and even social programs like SS which disproportionately benefits the wealthy. Also, they are in a far better position to invest their savings to protect themselves from inflation than the poor and middle class are. Get rid of fiat currency and back the dollar with gold, then inflation/government spending is greatly retrained so that it can't be abused to benefit the super wealthy as it has been over the past 4+ decades. That's a big reason why the wealth gap was so small back then, and it's no coincidence that it started increasing within the years after abolishing the gold standard.
None of that change under the gold standard unless you are out of gold. The money supply can grow just fine, inflation occurs, and you can bail out any bank you wish. Yes, under the gold standard there are limits to how much money you can have out, but that is actually its main weakness. It is not a strength. The money supply expands just fine under the gold standard. Our economy expanded (along with the money supply) at breakneck pace under the gold standard. It neither benefits the poor, nor harms the poor, any more than a properly managed fiat system.
False. Governments could not inflate the money supply at will like they can with paper. Disagree with your opinion. When there is no more gold to be brought into circulation, most of the time it takes labor to go get it somewhere in nature. It's more natural than firing up the printing press or punching numbers into a computer. That's why gold is always used as money in the absence of legal tender laws instead of paper. No it didn't. From 1934 through 1971, the average annual rate of expansion of real GDP per capita was about 3.5%. That's not "breakneck pace". For the record, that's more than double what it has been since we went to a fiat currency in 1971. Disagree for reasons already stated. Governments cannot inflate the supply of gold by pure will.
Everything you stated is exactly why the gold standard failed. There was no way to create inflation necessary for a stable economy. It was a nightmare. The Great Depression proved just how terrible the gold standard is and how tying yourself to a useless rock found in the ground is ridiculous in the 21st century. Developed economies will never go back to any commodity backed money system. It's not even logical. Only the craziest of libertarians actually believe it would work these days. Bitcoin, another failed example of non-centrally planning currency is a miserable unstable failure. People just have to understand why incredibly smart people came to the conclusion that central planning and organization creates the most stable economies and currencies. And we will get even more organized and our understanding of how central planning helps will get even greater. We are definitely not going to go backwards.
