The dollar didn’t make you rich. It just made everything look more expensive.

That sounds like inflation, until you price it in gold.

In 1971, gold was fixed at $35/oz, the median home cost roughly 714 ounces of gold.

Today, with gold around $4,700/oz, the median home costs closer to 85 ounces.

In gold terms, housing hasn’t inflated. It has collapsed.

And homes may be only the beginning.

Measured in dollars, nearly everything appears more expensive over time:
Cars. Televisions. Clothing. Consumer electronics.

But measured in gold, many of those same goods have experienced massive deflation since the 1970s, even as their quality improved dramatically.

The average television in 1975 was a bulky wooden box with poor picture quality and a few channels. Today, a fraction of the gold once required buys a massive 4K screen connected to nearly infinite information.

Cars are safer, faster, cleaner, and more reliable.
Phones replaced cameras, maps, stereos, televisions, and computers, all while shrinking into your pocket.

This also raises another question: if gold measures value this effectively, why aren’t more investors putting it to work?

Measured in gold, modern life has become astonishingly affordable.

Why?

Because the supply of gold grows slowly, roughly 1–2% annually.

Meanwhile, the global supply of goods, services, technology, and productivity compounds exponentially.

Humanity becomes more efficient every year:
Better logistics.
Better automation.
Better manufacturing.
Better software.
Better energy use.

In a stable monetary system, that should naturally lead to falling prices over time.

In other words: deflation.

Not depression.
Not collapse.

Abundance.

But modern economies are built on expanding debt and expanding currency supply. The financial system depends on perpetual monetary growth, which means the measuring unit itself--fiat currency--constantly changes.

So instead of prices falling alongside rising productivity, currencies lose purchasing power faster than goods become cheaper to produce.

The result?

Everything looks more expensive in dollars even while becoming cheaper in real terms.

That realization changes the way investors think about gold.

Because gold preserves purchasing power while fiat currencies steadily lose it, gold should not sit idle in a vault accumulating storage costs.

Historically, it didn’t.

Gold once circulated through the economy. It financed trade. It functioned as productive capital.

That idea has returned.

Through Monetary Metals’ Gold Leasing, investors can put their gold to productive use in the real economy and earn a yield on it, paid in more gold.

Instead of watching storage fees slowly reduce ounces over time, gold holders can increase the amount of gold they own through productive leasing arrangements.

In other words, gold may not only preserve purchasing power. It can help grow it.

And that matters because gold exposes an uncomfortable truth about the modern financial system.

Gold itself isn’t someone else’s liability.
It doesn’t require a central bank.
It doesn’t depend on government debt markets.

It simply measures purchasing power across time.

And what it reveals is uncomfortable:

The world may not actually be getting more expensive. The currency may simply be getting weaker.

That distinction matters for investors.

Because most people evaluate wealth in nominal terms:
Bigger portfolio balances.
Higher home prices.
Rising stock indexes.

But if the unit being measured is constantly depreciating, are those gains entirely real?

Gold forces a different perspective.

It asks investors to stop measuring wealth purely in dollars and start measuring what their savings can actually buy.

Because once investors realize the real story since 1971 may be currency debasement rather than true inflation, gold stops looking like a relic.

It starts looking like a measuring stick.

And perhaps the clearest one we have left.

Discover how to grow your gold holdings by earning a yield paid in gold.