This site includes a chart I never saw before: "Hour of Work Needed to buy the Dow."
cross-currents.net
It might be interesting to consider "hours of work needed to buy gold."
In 1956 I worked for the Forest Service putting out fires, and was paid no overtime, no matter how many hours we worked. Just a flat $1.50 an hour. If gold (which I could not have bought in this country) was then fixed at $35 an ounce, I had to work about 24 hours (asI sometimes did) for an ounce of gold.
Using an "inflation-counter program" [http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgihttp://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi] I find that my $1.50 is about $9.60 today. If I multiply that by 24, I get $230.
What that tells me is that I had better get out of the gold market quick as soon as I have substantial profits.
I did not expect to reach that conclusion when I began typing this message. But it now looks to me as if gold already has a pretty good inflation premium built into its price.
I suppose one could argue that the amount of gold in the world per human being was larger than it is now, but to argue that, I would have to know some more figures, so I will look those up.
census.gov
World population in 1956 was about 2.8 billion.
Now, it's about 6.2 billion, an increase of 2.21 times.
Now, does anyone know how much gold was available in 1956 and how much is available today?
OK, here's a site:
fgmr.com
It seems to show that about 1956 there was about 55,000 tonnes of monetary gold, and that by 1996 that was reaching 80,000 tonnes.
Here's a site that indicates total production up to 2,000 at 140,000 tonnes.
busrep.co.za
So far, it appears to me that world gold supply per person is somewhat less in 2002 than in 1956.
To be continued . . . |
