A 100 Year History Of The Gold Price And What Affects It
Gold has been a mineral that has been valuable for thousands of years. Gold has been seen as something that’s very hard to get and there is an agreed-upon value for it. People used to use it for trade, but then there began problems of trust between how people would trade the gold. Then people decided to trade-in the gold for items that they would deem to be valuable. Right now, just about every government has gold that they keep for emergency bargaining. Today, this article is going to focus on America’s relationship with gold and how gold has evolved in different kinds of uses.
GOLD IN 1920
Gold in 1920 had a much different value than what we know it for today. Right now, we see gold for other practical purposes, but back in these times, gold was being used for expansion. The great California gold rush happened around 70 years from this period and the state was growing massively every year. There were many reasons to care about gold and gold gave California some of its biggest industries in the entire country. Gold was so important that it laid the groundwork for tech companies to expand and eventually move into the state.
Money was being printed on the gold standard which held the Government more accountable in terms of how they would spend their money. Sources like macrotrends.net estimate the worth of gold at $267 per ounce in 1920. Keep in mind that is the value with inflation added. There was so much gold in California that the value was starting to drop. As a positive, this means that people in California were able to create strong businesses as well as the people who wanted to go there. If someone with ambitions wanted to go to Califonia, all they needed to do was have a moderate amount of gold and they could live there.
At this time, a lot of people were buying stocks. Generally, this is a good thing because it means more lifeblood is being pumped into the economy, and it means that the average person is going to have more money. This would become a big problem in the next decade, but for right now, it gave people more money in their pockets which lowered the value of gold. Generally, the less money people have in the economy, the more valuable gold is going to be since there are fewer people who can buy it.
GOLD IN 1970
This was a troubling time for America since they were spending a lot of money on the military at the time. Not only was there a lot of money into more war technology that most Americans didn’t support, but the economy itself also wasn’t doing the best at this point. The Vietnam war begin in 1969 and ended in 1973, which is a war that America lost and didn’t exactly recover from in the best way financially. Generally, when a country loses a war, that means they have to sacrifice a lot in the treaty of that war.
In terms of the actual economy, getting a job was very difficult during this time. There weren’t that many entrepreneurs and those who did have original things to offer to the country wouldn’t be successful until decades later in the late 1990s. Fortunately, when the Vietnam war had concluded in 1973, the value of gold multiplied massively, going from $30 per ounce in 1971 to $180 per ounce in 1970. It didn’t change a lot of the problems for people in America. Many of them didn’t have jobs with big salaries and homelessness was on the rise in major cities.
A lot of Richard Nixon’s policies also had an effect on gold in the country. Many of them didn’t have benefits for the average American ad it only achieved the effect of putting more people in poverty. Gold is something that will always have value but the bad economic policies along with spending on things that weren’t going to help the American made the value of gold shrink during the early 70s. This essentially means that massive corporate executives could buy gold, hold onto it and then sell it for profit after the war ended.
GOLD IN 2020
Gold in the modern age has risen for a number of reasons despite some questionable economic policies over the years. The value of gold per ounce has almost never been higher in our history. A lot of this comes from the impact of the silicon valley industries and the new uses for gold we never thought of. Apple, Android, Samsung, and massive tech companies work in the smartphone industry which is something that has changed human life forever. The materials to make smartphones are very important. This means that anyone with access to these smartphone materials can get massively wealthy off of them.
One of the materials that have become massively important to this new age of technology is gold. After years of studying scientists have concluded that gold is one of the best metals for conducting electricity. This means that if companies have enough gold, they can make a better product than their competitors. Like everything else in the world, there is only a limited amount they can use for their company, which gives them the incentive to raise their prices. This is a great thing for a wealthy country since, if their economy is good then the people have more of a reason to spend on gold.
At the time of writing this, the United States is still the leader in GDP even when compared to China or Japan. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the average American is extremely wealthy compared to the rest of the world, but it does mean that the big corporate executives can buy a lot more gold. Right now, the value of gold per ounce is around $1,559 per ounce. That’s a massive jump compared to what it was in the past, but experts are expecting the price to go down soon.