One issue resonating with voters this year is the affordability crisis. One-third of middle-class families are struggling to pay for basics, including food, housing, and child care, and this issue affects people in cities across the country.
Anyone who thinks this is just hype is greatly mistaken. It affects all races and ethnicities. Tens of millions of people go to sleep with this weight on their shoulders, and they have no relief.
According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, an incredible 88% of U.S. adults say they suffer from some form of financial stress. A nationwide study by Edward Jones and Gallup found that 216 million people were affected by some form of financial stress, strain, or uncertainty over the past year, while only 16% of those surveyed said they felt financially secure.
What surveys like these do not take into account is the emotional pain this causes. When people work as hard as they can and still can’t afford the basics, there’s no telling how they might respond. Could a sudden or unexpected event be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sets off a very serious chain of events?
Gone But Not Forgotten
Years ago, life in America was not only a lot simpler but also a lot less expensive. Take food as an example. In those days, most probably ate some kind of meat for dinner; meat is still popular, but now many simply cannot afford to purchase it.
Numerous fast-food chains that once were packed with people who wanted inexpensive and tasty food have been forced to either raise prices sharply, reduce portion sizes, or use some combination of these. A simple activity like going out with the family for dinner, even in once modestly priced outlets, has become out of reach for so many. In fact, a recent survey of 1,000 Americans found that half were skipping meals because food has become so expensive.
Worse affordability issues include not being able to pay rent or utilities or purchase crucial medicine. According to the Brookings Institution, 27% of white families, 39% of Black families, 41% of Asian American families, and 46% of Native American families are dealing with these problems.
The Dollar Dilemma
Based on the number of dollars in our pockets, we are making a lot more money now than we did several decades ago. And yet so many of us are struggling. How are we to understand this?
The answer is actually very simple. Looking at even a few of the statistics compiled by Adam Livingston, Vice President at Strive, a non-profit workforce development organization, and financial writer, makes clear how much the dollar has been devalued.
In 1971, the median household income was $9,030, or the equivalent of 220 ounces of gold. In 2025, this figure was $87,460, or only 25 ounces of gold.
Over these years, paychecks have increased tenfold, but measured in gold, they fell by 88%. To have the equivalent today of the median income in 1971 would require an annual salary of $890,000. These statistics are shocking, but there are many more.
Back in the day, the greenback was highly regarded in every country in the world. It was sought after, prized, and cherished. For just a few dollars a day, it was possible to travel across Europe, find reasonable lodgings, and eat a meal in a decent (if not fancy) restaurant. That is no longer the case. Dollars are still widely accepted by merchants, but they no longer have the appeal or purchasing power they once had. What has happened?
There are various answers to this question, and one of them can be traced back to August 15, 1971. On that date, over 55 years ago, there was an announcement that has become known as the “Nixon Shock.” Then-President Nixon took the global economy off the gold standard and replaced it with a fiat currency system, paper money. And neither the U.S. nor the global economies have been the same since then.
Throughout history, gold has always been a trusted form of currency and has even given rise to the expression “as good as gold.” Legitimizing paper money was taking a big risk, as it was something new, neither proven nor tried. Why did Nixon take this chance?
The Federal Reserve provided several reasons. Probably the most popular is that this prevented foreign central banks from draining U.S. gold reserves. Another was that paper money could help protect the domestic economy. For example, by having greater control over the money supply and the economy, central banks like the Fed would be able to lower interest rates when the economy was weak, a move that could stimulate business; they could also prevent it from overheating when business was strong. This point made sense and seemingly offered important benefits that the gold standard did not.
Guns And Butter
There were other reasons for the government to make this change. In 1971, the Vietnam War was still raging, and it was very costly. Moreover, at the same time, the government was spending heavily on social programs. This combination “flooded the global markets with paper dollars, far exceeding the actual gold the U.S. held in reserve,” according to AI Overview.
Meanwhile, countries like France and Germany were losing faith in the overvalued dollar and began demanding physical gold in exchange for their paper dollar holdings. “U.S. gold (reserves) had dropped by roughly half in just over 25 years, threatening a total depletion of the Treasury’s gold,” AI Overview adds.
These events created much higher inflation, increased unemployment, and slow economic growth, all occurring at the same time.
As Bill Clinton later famously pointed out, elections are won or lost by the economy, and Nixon understood this very well. In 1971, he realized that voters were becoming very unhappy.
Eager to resolve this quickly, Nixon ordered that wages and prices be frozen for 90 days, not a perfect solution for controlling inflation, but one that would put a cap on prices and give the government a little breathing room as it sought a better solution. And this plan did, in fact, provide some relief, but only very temporarily, because it addressed the symptoms of the problem but did nothing to change the policies that were causing them: too much government spending.
On the bottom line, rather than being backed by gold, dollars were now backed only by the public’s trust in the government, and the government was able to print more paper money whenever it wanted to. And, in the following years and decades, it did exactly that, leading to the highest debt in the history of the world.
In retrospect, was going off the gold standard the right decision? The government had to do something to stop the gold drain. Fiat money probably would have worked very well. Unfortunately, the idea was abused by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and now no one knows how to deal with the humongous debt that all of us will have to deal with. More and more, living simple middle-class lives is becoming just a pleasant memory rather than today’s reality.
Gerald Harris is a financial and feature writer. Gerald can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
