If you want to see a financial system that promotes savings and investments, a society needs a “concrete” Unit of Accounting. Economists have taught for 100 years that “money” is just worth the trust people put into it. What happens when such trust fades?

The conceptual “concrete” detail of this idea is that it makes to seem “more trustworthy” any financial paper (bonds, deferred payments), which could use this Unit of Accounting. The idea is you can hold and possess the object (coin) but you might prefer to own a bond, which pays interest, and it pledges to pay you a coin-object also in 10 years – tangible if you want, or in its equivalent market-value in whatever paper-exchange funds you may ask to receive for payment.

Planning requires a “frame of reference.” Visualize the problem most people face when challenged by financial planning decisions, such as for a distant retirement. What is the frame of reference in which someone is supposed to weigh some future value (in “dollars”)?

[ Pretend you are not as well-informed about finance and economics as the professionals you are consulting. How well can they predict the future?]

A lifetime of retirement beginning in 20 years, planned in “dollars,” cannot be compared to any standard of living referent (rental costs, food costs, taxation) in terms of familiar “dollars” today. The numbers do not allow a comparison of values because they have no relation except as the passage of time may reveal. You have to predict the Consumer Price Index 20-40 years from now.

What will a dollar get you next year? — Less?

No one can successfully do financial planning today in terms of “dollars.”

A gold coin would remain a gold coin and whatever your deferred-payment contract says, it would promise to pay you that equivalent way (in the same kind of gold coinage). Creditors could be paid in a gold coin, but more likely in some transfer of ownership of other paper assets to discharge the debt, but denominated in the gold coinage. Final settlements could be done by any other, different paper-credit methods (at the option of the obligee).

The academic economists, and those at the Federal Reserve, offer a supposed “stable price level” objective of measuring. To accomplish this, we (or they) would need to be knowing or trusting the relative value of something you want/need, and what you can trade to obtain it (in the future).

What will a pound of beef cost you in 25 years? We might not be able to predict the exchange rate of an ounce of gold vs. a pound of beef in 25 years, but it would NOT be a whim of imagination. Real resources are used to produce beef – and gold.

I would be more comfortable thinking about coin vs. beef than about $100 today vs. $1,000,000 in 25 years, and wondering which would be more valuable?
Real resources are not used to produce Federal Reserve Accounting Units.

Net present value calculations collapse to the shortest time horizon when future money values are uncertain. “Uncertainty” is subjective.

The “unit of accounting” in your mind should possess some “object permanence.” It ought to be a foundation of “Constitutional Money” to have the government’s Unit of Accounting be a concrete thing. In the old days of 1785 and 1792, the “dollar” was an object – a silver coin. Your property is your private ownership; so would a coin-object be;

. . . but what is the status of the “account balance” your bankers owe you in promised bank-draft credit to pay your expenses? Do you use direct debits or checking? If your “account balance” happens to be denominated in government-accounting units (“d-o-l-l-a-r-s”), you should have a right to know if those are not shrinking or “melting away” as a matter of government (or Federal Reserve “central planning”) policy?

Your bankers rely on Federal Reserve Accounting-unit U$D — their bank’s reserves, on deposit with the Fed.

“F.R.A.U.D.s” would be an insulting acronym for those accounting units.

We continue to rely on them because the I.R.S. requires it.

See also related pages
A Modest Proposal for U.S. Gold Bonds, in Kilo of Gold
Gold As a Parallel Currency
Government Accounting with Gold Grams.