My pleasure; it's a worthy discussion on applied economics, and now realize that I've missed the most important aspect of all - time. What is the purpose of innovation and increased productivity? Time. To create more time for enjoying life is the ultimate goal of creating wealth. A good question: do most Americans have more time for their high value activities?

Yes, very good. You've hit on an all-too-common misconception about gold as an inflation hedge. Another is the view of it as an investment, but as usual, we must define our terms. If we define an investment as something with an internal rate of return (IRR), then gold does not fit. In fact, the only assets that fit would be those dependent on human action. Certainly, gold is an asset like fine art and other commodities, but it is unique as the universal form of sound money. To fit that mold, a highly durable commodity must have a very low flow to stock ratio, meaning very difficult and expensive to produce (flow added to the stock), among other things. The problem with gold as money is security and transportability; that's where gold-backed bank notes come in handy.

My original comment was that this article fails miserably. First, the title is absurd. The subject, "Life in America" doesn't mean anything. The predicate, "Never Been More Unaffordable" is easily refuted, disproven, and dismissed as juvenile. Now, if the intent of the article is to prove that expenses for the average American household at the median level of living standards is far greater than it was 40 years ago, then it would help to have a working knowledge of economics and technological advancement. In fact, the author doesn't seem to care about either. For example, it is wise to use inflation adjusted prices, and even better to understand the concept of inflation - both monetary and price inflation, for this project. To answer your question, the examples used in the article should not only adjust prices to down to 1986 levels, but also adjust relative values up for the contribution of technological improvements. Of course, this is not possible because in many cases there was nothing 40 years ago for which to compare them. It gets even better (or worse); all of these improvements in the analysis ignore the geometric expansion of choice among alternatives. However, all of this ignores the obvious. A hard money, gold-based currency would eliminate the waste of time that this article has produced. That is the goal of government monopoly fiat currency, to create chaos, that ostensibly, only more of the poison will cure.

I think we should look at gold differently. Think of it as a constant, as an absolute. The value of all other currencies is ultimately determined by the universality of gold. In that context, the question is not the affordability of gold, but efficacy of the commonly accepted currency.

More simply, the headline is patently untrue. To claim everything is more expensive than ever using terribly inflated dollars as the standard of value is garbage propaganda. Context is essential, and so is objective evidence. In this case, gold is a superior standard of value with which to compare relative costs for maintaining one's lifestyle.