The below is a May 26, 2025 post from the Powerline Blog, by John Hinderaker. I found it interesting and provocative, especially in light of Proverbs 11:1 — “A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.”

John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog, May 26, 2025 (What Happened):

1971 was the year when I graduated from college and started law school, so I remember it well. But I had no idea, then, that something momentous was happening that year–something that would shape America’s history, and the world’s, for the next 50 years and more.

But what was it?

This site has collected a number of charts that illustrate how pivotal 1971 was. Some have to do with inflation, spending and debt:

What happened? In August 1971, the U.S. went off the gold standard. I think it is fair to say that the inflation and exploding government debt we have seen since then are the direct results of that action. Since time immemorial, people around the world have been willing to trade goods and services for two things: gold and silver. Sometimes, but not always, bronze. China was the first country to introduce paper currency. At some point–I don’t remember what century–a European traveler to China was astonished to see people accepting paper in exchange for goods. He asked his Chinese guide why in the world anyone would do that. The answer, the guide explained, was simple: you could take those pieces of paper to a government office, and they would give you gold for them. So the paper was just a convenience.

When the U.S. went off the gold standard, the value of the dollar relative to gold crashed, as did the values of most other major currencies, which were linked to the dollar:

An exception was the Swiss franc, which was not connected to the dollar. The Swiss franc is now also a fiat currency, but the dollar has been in long-term decline relative to it.

Was going off the gold standard a catastrophic mistake?

The linked site has many other charts, some of which relate to matters of currency and money supply, but others do not. Some charts suggest that rising income inequality began in around 1971.

Since growing income inequality is basically another term for increasing opportunity, I generally assume it is good. But presumably there are limits. And this is interesting, and possibly linked to abandoning the gold standard:

Of course, there was a lot going on in 1971 that wasn’t related to currency. The women’s movement, for instance, or, as we called it then, “women’s lib.”

Per capita GDP increased, but men’s wages didn’t. A lot of that GDP increase was earned by women who had been smoked out of the home and into the labor market, where their labor could be taxed:

Black progress, relative to whites, slowed. Most people probably don’t know that black progress was faster prior to passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s:

There is much more at the link, some of it reflecting a political perspective that I don’t share. But most of it is pure data. 1971 is when the number of lawyers began to explode, as did the pages of federal regulations, in a case of mutually accelerating cause and effect. That is also when health care costs took off, and when we began spending grotesquely more money on education, to zero benefit.

For better or worse–mostly worse, it seems–1971 represents a turning point in history. And of everything that happened that year, it appears that going off the gold standard–relatively little remarked at the time, and approved by all right-thinking people, even though it was done by Nixon–was the most momentous decision.