It's also important to fix the world's financial system.
1971 was a
magic year. Fifty years ago, Nixon took the final step in unpegging the dollar from gold (FDR started it, in 1933), and allowed it float freely. The immediate result was predictable, and awful -- a decade of stagflation, where a mix of high unemployment and high inflation destroyed jobs, ruined savings, and caused rationing and gas lines.
The longer term effects were worse. With money no longer backed by anything substantial, governments were free to print as much money as much as they thought they could get away with. If the government increases the amount of money by 5%, they get to keep that 5%, and it's paid for by a rise in prices. This is a hidden tax that nobody voted for, but it's worse than most taxes because it doesn't just affect your income or spending, it also affects all the money you have saved. Your bank account becomes worth 5% less. This hurts everyone, but it hurts the retired and other people on fixed incomes most of all.
How much has the government stolen by inflation? Between 1934 and 1971, gold was $35 an ounce. That wasn't a price, it was the definition. Central banks around the world could take a dollar to the US Treasury, and get a specific quantity of gold. Today, gold is $1,827.46 an ounce. The difference between the two amounts is how much the federal government has stolen, gradually, over 50 years. They've robbed us of 98% of the value of the dollar, and left the public with only 2%.
This is even worse than it seems because of the Cantillion effect. Inflation doesn't happen all at once. If the government increases the amount of money by 5%, that doesn't mean the stock market jumps 5%, your grocery bill rises 5%, your car payment goes up by 5%, and your wages are automatically increased by 5%, in one fell swoop. No, the price increases spread in ripples throughout the economy. It starts in the financial sector, because they're the first ones to get the new dollars. Then it goes into the capital sector (industry and the stock market), as the financial institutions lend out the new money. It's only as new products get manufactured and prices pass down the supply chain that consumer prices go up. Among the last prices to rise are wages.
The people who get the money first (financiers and companies) get a great deal, because they can spend the money before prices rise, and pocket the difference. Conversely, the people who get the money last (you and I) get shafted, because by the time the money reaches us prices have already risen everywhere else. That means we don't get a cut. The result of this is inflation is like a huge spigot, that continually drains money from the pool of normal people into the reservoirs of the the rich and privileged.
You're probably tired of hearing this now, but it's even worse than that. I'm not going to go into details here, but inflation is also the reason why the stock market keeps crashing. It's why people have stopped saving. And there are a whole complex of reasons why it's relevant to the thread. It's why government debt has gone through the roof. It's allowed vast government spending, one things like wars and social programs. And most topically, it's one of the key reasons why governments have grown so much, and why governments like the US are pushing for more worldwide coordination and enforceable inter-governmental standards (global minimum income tax anyone?) to keep the gravy train flowing.
And even that's barely the start of the bad things. 1971, the year when the dollar became completely based on fiat, is an inflection point when nearly everything bad you can imagine about the economy and the government got much worse. This is what happens when the government is no longer held financially accountable.
Many graphs of bad things that started to go bad much more quickly in the unfortunate year of 1971:
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/