Gold has many uses in modern technology. It's used a lot in satellites. Unlike paper money, you can't just print more of it, so it retains its value a lot better.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
I wonder why it was originally valuable, though. It isn't very useful for making pre-technology weapons. You can't eat it. It's just ornamentation. I suppose it was its scarcity and because it was pretty.
Is it wise to invest in gold? I read in a magazine (whose purpose was to sell gold) that the value of gold doesn't increase, but the value of money decreases. So is it wise to invest in gold to protect against inflation?
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"You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head." --Marge Simpson
I tell all my clients to put their money in canned food and shotgun shells. That's where the real value is should the money system collapse.
Gold historical got "valuable" because it has some unique characteristics. It does not tarnish, is easilly malleable, relatively rare or difficult to get, does not rust. Some cultures looked at it as having a relationship with the sun which for early cultures was the all powerful ball of fire in the sky they could not explain. Early coinage had it's value directly tied to the weight of the gold. Coins would even be cut into pieces (pieces of eight) for smaller gold denominations. In gold rush California and other areas you could pay your bills with gold dust. There really was no difference between the coin and the metal. As the U.S. and other countries moved their currencies away from the gold standard, gold became less valuable to the individual as a means of paying for goods and services. Frankly, very few industrialized countries in the world could function on a gold standard anymore because, frankly, there is no place to store trillions of dollars in gold. The economies of industrialized countries deal in huge numbers and storing, transporting, finding, and securing that much gold is almost impossible.
I think the change in the view of gold also has to do with the utility of the metal today. It does has some industrial usage and we like to wear jewelry made of it but what can we do with it. If I have a half ounce of gold in one hand and an internet capable Palm pilot in the other, which one will be more useful for me in gaining employment, selling goods and services, and purchasing goods and services. Gold can be a more effective hedge against runaway inflation but only in relation to the world gold market. In post WWI German it took a wheelbarrel of money to buy a loaf of bread due to runaway inflation but gold was worth whatever the world market would bear. In a dissaster/government collapse situation what has more value food, ammo, fuel, etc or a metal that not only can we not make anything useful out of but that weighs too much to carry around reasonably. If you are worried about the future I would suggest getting out of debt, getting your food supply in order, getting some other survival type stuff, get an education, and work on some skills that you can use to help survive an economic collapse. If gold were so important then the general authorities would be telling us to stock up.
I've heard that during WWII sugar was worth it's weight in gold. I don't know that sugar was actually that valuable, but everyone I know from that period talks about how scarce sugar was. I agree; a supply of food and similar things will be much more valuable in a collapse than gold would be.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
Salt has also been very valuable during certain times in history, particularly before electricity and refrigeration. It was key in the preservation of food. The salt trade out of Asia and Eastern Europe was very big for hundreds of years.
There was a book I read about a lady and her mom being in a concentration camp during WWII and her mom had "felt" like stashing salt for some many months before the stuff started hitting the fan. She was able to barter that salt for everything their family needed for several months...
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
The U.S. FedGov has already confiscated gold from U.S. citizens once, in the late '30's. According to an article in this week's World Affairs Brief issue, "Correspondence beetween GATA (a private organization investigating government manipulation of gold prices ) and the U.S. Treasury Dept. reveals that the Federal government still reserves the right to confiscate citizens' precious metals. 'The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asseerting the U.S. Goverenment's authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares -- and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well.' All too true. The President's emergency powers are absolute and cover all aspects of law. There is no constitutional authority given to Congress to create these emergency powers."
The only use I have for gold, silver and platinum is as the US$ continually decreases in purchasing power, as it has all my adult life, (now down to about 10% of its purchasing power 50 years ago), it has been a good means of retaining purchasing power.
My thinking is to be able to exchange the gold for currency at a later time. I expect that a given weight of gold for which I pay $X today will fetch more than $X at a later time as the value (purchasing power) of the US$ (and most other currencies) continues to decrease. It's a way to try to beat inflation, which in fact is caused by the "Fed" increasing the money supply - making each dollar in your pocket worth less.
