How Useful Is Gold |
There are so many other materials in the world besides gold, without which life would be much more difficult—sand, salt, coal, iron, gas, fossil fuels, lithium, bauxite, and copper;
Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh ——Bio and Archives--April 4, 2026
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Gold is useful or useless, depending on who you ask. Gold serves its purpose for coinage, store of value, portability, collectors, medicine, chemistry, electronics, and on the finger of every engaged or married couple around the globe as a symbol of the circle of life and forever love.
Gold stopped being the universal yardstick behind the value of every currency after 1971
Gold used to be a universal yardstick of coinage value in market exchanges. Gold was helpful because it did not die on the way to the market, held its relative value in any amounts, did not tarnish, and it was the gold standard around the globe since 2500 B.C., relatively speaking.
Gold stopped being the universal yardstick behind the value of every currency after 1971, when the U.S. discontinued redeeming its paper currency with gold. That is when money became valued by government fiat (Latin for ‘let it be’).
Major trading nations had a fixed, official rate of exchange (1944-1971) tied to the U.S.........