What is real wealth?
In the past few years I’ve done quite a bit of research into the history of money and its value in various civilizations. This has lead me into a study of the Federal Reserve and previous central banks that the United States has had, and why we need to return to gold and silver for our currency. Most Americans know very little about their currency or the nature of money. I created this website to share what I have learned and help others discover how to achieve and hold onto true wealth without inflation and debt eroding it away.Why silver?
Silver is tangible property, like gold or land. It cannot be inflated or devalued by creating more out of thin air. Real work must be done to mine more out of the ground and refine it; this labor has a cost, and thus silver has an inherent value. It is a store of wealth, unlike a bank account based on fiat currency that is declining.
Silver and gold are fungible, divisible, and durable, making them universally accepted as money or an exchange of goods, much more so than commodities such as salt, sea shells, cattle, wheat, and other forms of currency used in the past. Precious metals are worth more by weight since they are scarce, and can be stored long term with no spoiling and very little corrosion.
Silver is easier for the average person to buy and sell than gold and more expensive precious metals since it costs much less per ounce. Gold is better for large transactions, like buying a car or land, or storing a significant amount of wealth long term, but silver is easier to carry in your pocket for day to day transactions such as buying bread at the grocery store or putting gas in your vehicle.
Silver has more commercial and industrial uses than gold for its natural antiseptic properties, cleaning, catalysts, mirrors, photography, batteries, electronics, etc. and yet less is mined out of the ground than is consumed every year. Silver has been a better investment than gold or platinum over the past ten years. Check out the chart in the first frame above.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.–Thomas Jefferson
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.–Henry Ford
Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.–John Adams
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.–John Adams
When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.–Boston Federal Reserve Bank
By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system.–President James A. Garfield
The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender… These notes are not money, but promises to pay money. If the holders demand it, the promise should be kept.–President James A. Garfield
Historically, the United States has been a hard money country. Only [since 1913] has the United States operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated over 87%. During the preceding 140 year period, the hard currency of the United States had actually maintained its value. Wholesale prices in 1913... were the same as in 1787.–Kenneth Gerbino
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.–Thomas Jefferson
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.–John Maynard Keynes
No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.–George Washington
Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.–Daniel Webster
–Karl Marx, 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto
- 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
- 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
- 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
- 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
- 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
