Modern Economy
By Tristan Ness
The Basics
We base value off of a dollar scale, meaning everything has a value attached to it. The more dollar value a person owns, the more wealthy they are considered. The one reason this system succeeds is because it is backed by the gold standard. This means that even though our monetary system is not the same as those of other countries, the fact that all money is given a value based off of a fixed quantity of gold means that it can be exchanged and interchanged without losing meaning or value. It is still an unstable system though. If the production of a country's money is not carefully balanced, that country's money will lose meaning. This was most notably seen during Germany's economic crisis shortly after World War II. Germany owed the various countries who participated in the war a substantial debt in reparations, but did not have enough money to caver the expenses, so they just decided to print more, which rendered their currency worthless. If money is overproduced, then what value does it actually have? When to much of the same currency is made at once, it loses its illusion of value and becomes worthless as a result.