2000 vs 2020
The United States have changed significantly since the year 2000.
Housing Sales Price 2000: $200,000[1]
Housing Sales Price 2020: $380,000
Dow Jones 2000: $11,000
Dow Jones 2020: $30,600
S&P 500 2000: $1,500
S&P 500 2020: $3,750
Nasdaq 2000: $4,590
Nasdaq 2020: $12,890
US Unemployment 2000 (November): 3.9%[2]
US Unemployment 2020 (November): 6.7%[3]
US Federal Debt 2000: $5.6 trillion
US Federal Debt 2020: $27.5 trillion
Gold 2000: $250
Gold 2020: $1,898 (high of $2080)
Silver 2000: $5
Silver 2020: $26 (high of $50 in 1980 and 2011)
M1 Money Supply 2000: $1,300 billion
M1 Money Supply 2020: $6,667 billion
M2 Money Supply 2000: $4,900 billion
M2 Money Supply 2020: $19,000 billion
Prices are higher than they were 20 years ago.
Stocks and housing prices are at all time highs today. They are not high because of a healthy economy as the unemployment rate has doubled in 20 years after never fully recovering from the Great Recession and reaching a high of 14-20% in May.[4]
Prices have increased because one part of the government (the Federal Reserve) has been creating money out of thin air to loan another part of the government (the taxpayers) to pay for welfare, government employment, war, bailouts, and now stimulus.
The USA live at least $27.5 trillion beyond our means. If the government stops printing money, our average standard of living will collapse; so, they’ll keep printing money while it becomes worth less.
“The wavelike movement affecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression, is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” -Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949), page 570
Weimar!
[1]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS
[2]https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm
[3]https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
[4]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/7z0su5kddjdzpzuduik7j5xu1tkjmc
