What's a fair price for common US silver coins

You have to remember that people have a lot more than in 1900. Did they have smart phones? No. Did they have cars (I don't mean the existence, but the near requirement of owning or renting one.)? No. Were they required to have health and car insurance? No.

So you see, while your inflation numbers might stack up people have, and spend, much more than in 1900.

...And then smart phones, tablets, high tech cars, and the elimination of cheap housing happened.

So my point here is that people think they need a lot more than they did in 1900, not that your point of view is stupid.

 

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This is all very true. The standard of living has increased immensely since 1900. The problem seems to be that, despite these technologies, the standard has dropped since around 1970 or so. If only one adult in a household was needed to work and support the family (of 4 or more), that was a big, big deal as far as I can see. That means the average wage carried a person twice better than today.

But despite real wages sagging, technological breakthroughs have offset poorer working conditions. So, overall, perhaps things are not that much worse today than even when the Boomers were growing up.

 

Yes, deflation can be a horrible thing. I'm just concerned because deflation is sometimes needed for markets to reach healthier price levels -- e.g., the housing market should not be going up the way it did during the last bubble period. I think it'd be better for the Fed to focus more on promoting capital investment rather than personal consumption through the "wealth effect."

I agree that the little guy is being taken advantage of today, by the way. I think this has a deflationary effect that hurts the economy, since there is less money in the hands of consumers to buy goods and services. Hopefully, there will be a rebalancing soon.

[Arguably some of this can be construed as political, but the overall emphasis is economic and how that ties in to bullion investments. Keep in mind that there is gray area in bullion discussions. So I have altered my wording to be more economic in tone.]

 

Vlaha,

It seems like you are arguing

Agreed on all points

 

Yes I suppose I am arguing, but my point is that while inflation calculators say that people have four times the income, it doesn't matter very much. Why? It's simple, they aren't smart about spending it. They think that they need this and that, and oh, they must get that iphone. For crying out loud, over half of my friends have smart devices!

To condense my argument, basically people expect to have a lot more, so they spend a lot more. If they make 44,000 sometimes they spend 48,000 ect.

 

Right, I agree, and that is why I was confused, I think we are on the same page

 

...If that page is people should be wiser with their money, then yes!