are gold and silver money?

OK Jim, you were doing very well in 1970. Congrats.

That is like making $1,745.27 per week today. And yes, that's about $90,000/yr in 2011. You were the rich guy that got all of the gorgeous girls in 1970? You had a new Corvette and a Ferrari? You must be in the $900K/yr. income range by now?

I was making $40/week ($0.50 /hour) in 1970. I couldn't afford a watermelon.

 

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Going from memory, minimum wage in 1970 was probably around $1.70/hour, and that is about what I was making washing dishes while going to school. So your numbers don't make sense.

And even though the metrics say that $15,000 in 1970 was equal to $90,000 today, the $90K person has a higher standard of living, partly due to productivity/technology increases and partly because tax rates were much higher back then. I remember 1970 very well because of some things going on in my life that year, and my father was making about $15K at the time and was unable to live a lifestyle anywhere close to what you believe was possible.

 

In my neck of the woods in 1970, $15,000/year would have been a really good money-- much more than my family was bringing in. That was also about the going rate for a modest house in a quiet older neighborhood near schools.

 

Maybe it's a matter of location. In New Jersey $15K wasn't anywhere near "really good money" and modest existing houses were probably around $45-50K. It was probably close to the bottom of what would be considered middle class.

 

Well betting on any commodity in the late 90's was a good bet, my bet was silver.

"Peak oil" was actually brought up during the gas crisis in the early 70's in this country according to my reading, (I was too young at the time). However, it was brought up again in the very late 70's, at the same time "global cooling" was all of the rage. It would scare you two ways, telling you the earth will get colder, and then the second paragraph tell you how we will soon peak at how much oil we can use to warm ourselves, kind of completing the circle of doom. I did a report on it one time, so remember having photocopies of book pages and articles about peak oil from that time frame.

Yes, peak oil does not mean we will dramatically decline production, its just prodution will peak and gradually decline. Prices, though, will be more unstable with more demand chasing lower production.

Chris

 

Sorry, about the $40 a week.. that was what I was making mowing yards in the housing project when I was nine years old. Just goes to show you that people who are willing to sweat can make a dollar... Apparently I don't sweat as much as i did 50 years ago though because I am not making $900000000 a minute now or whatever your figure was.. and yes I did have the car and the girls. But the point is that in 1970 a simiskilled acme gridley screw machine set up man could make $300 a week.. Adjusted for the value of the dollar they make a tenth that now. Minimum wage in 1970 was $1.60 per hour so maybe you could bring some kind of action against those people who were paying you 50 cents.. I don't think there is a statute of limitations on federal wage and hour crimes. And I wasn't rich.. but Damn Good Looking!

(p.s. you might invest in a math class.. unless you were in fact working 16 hours a day five days a week @ 50 cents per hour)

 

True enough.. i recall my friend who made $14,000 a year as a pole climber for ma bell in the mid sixties and as jobs go he was the "rich" kid in our class.. But his house wasn't one of those 5000 square foot monsters that most people seem to need these days. So yes $15000 in 1970 was like $100,000 today. But a coke was a dime and today it is a dollar if you buy two at the Texaco. (where i buy my $4 diesel) So it takes 150 Big ones to get what you got for 15 big ones in 1970..

Unless you are making $32,000 today you are making less than gomer at the gas station in 1970 and believe me i know a lot of people who are making less than that.

 

Not being a scientist or a mystic, I can't say whether or not the peak oil theory will prove true in the short run. If Saudi Arabia announces that their fields have peaked, we may be there because it is improbable that the shortfall could be made up from other sources. But the rate of increase in production seems to have slowed to a crawl, the quality of the oil is declining, and it is almost a sure bet that the amount produced will never double from today's level even as Asia grows demand. So the most likely outcome will be continually higher prices to keep supply in balance with demand, and that's a very important input to the investment decision.

 

My house was bought for $8,000 in the early '60s and sold for $24,000 in 1979. It was close to all schools, as well as downtown shopping. While it would have been considered lower middle class, the neighborhood was well-kept and there was no major crime, except for one ugly property damage incident.

 

And for the record I make $1908.07 per week now, and so after 40 years I have gotten raises totaling 8% in real buying power. And the girls are still gorgeous.. you just have to iron them..

And I can't afford a watermellon

 

I am not sure if i agree with you or not.. I think you said the standard of living was higher then because of taxes being higher and or maybe you said it was higher because of taxes being lower.. but whatever, depending on the standard the standard was higher.. I mean if you owned the best mule in town in 1970 you most likely had much higher status than if you happen to own the best mule in town today.

Likewise is having 900 channels from five countries a higher/lower standard than getting Andy Griffith and Walter Cronkite on two?

So it is apples and dried apples..

We also had duck and cover, DDT and "they" lived "over there"

 

I live within a mile of a guy who is on the silver standard.. No kidding.. He is a scrap dealer and he will take paper dollars and he will pay in paper dollars but he doesn't do business with any bank .. the only person he will bank with is a fellow 30 miles away who deals in silver dollars and gold. He trades his paper for silver at the end of every week.. He has been doing that for forty years... He has no education and no teeth but if you ask him for certain Morgan date he can deliver.. for a price..

 

DDT was banned in 1972, duck-and-cover in my town was basically transformed into tornado drills after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and "they" still live "over there"-- only "over there" is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.

 

The dirty secret about DDT is that we banned the best pesticide known to man, because "it made bald eagle eggs fragile". Problem is, we never asked if they KNEW that, and later research has fed ddt to eagles and there is no effect whatsoevr to their shells. Millions of people around the world die every year because "civilized" nations banned ddt.

Ask New Yorkers in the midst of their bed bug infestation how they feel about ddt being banned. I am for a clean environment, but it would be nice if something was actually proved before being banned.

Chris

 

slightly ff-topic:, but I can just see John Force mounting a set of M&H Dragmasters on gold rims and doing a burn out prior to a 3.9 second quarter mile (or 0.039 sec before the rims disintegrated from lack of strength :smile)

 

It is your right to disagree, but you also completely misunderstood what I wrote. So I'll take responsibility for not writing clear enough, but whether or not you want to investigate further is up to you.

 

I would take the opposite position -- that something should be proved safe before it is allowed.

 

If after 40 years of doing business in silver he is uneducated and without teeth, it's tough to see how his program has been successful.

 

I completely agree.. but I fail to see how it is off topic. Especially as off topic as oil. I begin this with the fact that aluminum was used to top the Washington monument because at the time it was the rarest metal in the world.. Now we cook eggs in it. If we base our monetary policy on the scarcity of an element (like maybe Silicon) and suddenly that metal becomes as common as sand .. Then we have a problem external to our economic system. Like mother nature counterfeiting for us. Even in systems like the feather money people of Santa Cruz the value of the money has to rest in the authenticity of the feather money makers. Otherwise any old tribesman could just whip up a bunch of counterfeit feather money. The system always depends on the pen of the CFO. If the president says gold is money its money .. if she says its not its not.

 

I think the fact it is not successful.. except for having two million dollars worth of sliver in his back yard.. was my point.. money is what the government says it is.