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The US real estate to gold ration has always facinated me: https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-go

The US real estate to gold ration has always facinated me: https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/ If you bought a house with gold in 1890 or 2023, the price would be... about the same.

oldpersonintx 3y ago
the old maxim is that an ounce of gold would always buy a man a new suit, a meal, and a place to sleep for the night
curiousllama 3y ago
Lol I love this
nairboon 3y ago
So in terms of gold, real estate is currently kind of cheap?
- randomdata 3y ago
  Or gold is expensive.
foobarbaz33 3y ago
I forget where I heard it. Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today. Cold metal seems to act as cold storage of value across history.
- kspacewalk2 3y ago
  >Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today. Probably not during famines.
  - ARandomerDude 3y ago
    Ackchyually...if you compare ancient famine surge pricing to modern, stable, non-famine pricing then probably not. But go somewhere on earth where famine is still a real thing without humanitarian aid and compare famine-to-famine pricing. I imagine it would probably be similar.
- everforward 3y ago
  That would be fascinating, if true. It requires balancing so many things. We keep mining, so supply is increasing, but so is population and thus demand. We keep making more efficient ways to mine silver which should make it cost more silver, but we are also getting more efficient at herding goats making it cheaper. It's crazy that many factors could be/stay in balance. It makes me wonder whether those factors are actually separate or whether these factors scale based on some common element like population.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Would be even crazier if the causality flows from the amount of the mineral available - i.e. can't have a larger population without mining more of the silver (which could be correlated with mining a whole bunch of other minerals involved in the supporting economy etc.).
- o11c 3y ago
  Hm, sources seem to vary a lot ... but they all seem to be within a single order of magnitude at least.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
  > Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today Interesting factoid if true, but it's hard to see how this could be anything other than coincidence. The relative scarcity, and demand, for goats vs silver must have changed massively due to things like modern factory farming, modern mechanized mining, modern fiat currency, modern food alternatives, etc, etc. So, if the price of goats in silver is in fact still the same, I don't think the takeaway should be that these two commodities can be assumed to still have the same relative supply vs demand of 2000 years ago, and that this proves that bullion is a good store of value (even if it is).
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  We can arbitrarily pick data points to prove a thesis, but that’s only one item. It is incredibly cheaper to do pretty much everything right now than it is during the Roman times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653366
- pjc50 3y ago
  Even the Romans had problems with debasement of the silver currency. As well as the real problem of a metal currency: specie shortage making it difficult to do large transactions at all sometimes.
ElevenLathe 3y ago
Gilded Age 2.
fullyAbstracted 3y ago
But the gold can only recently be held in an ETC and would cost money to securely store for most of that time. The house could be rented and yield an income.
- legulere 3y ago
  A house also needs upkeep. Usually that’s around the same amount as rent. In some markets like Munich rent is not even enough to pay that.
AdamH12113 3y ago
Just to be clear for anyone who didn't actually look at the graph, the ratio varies by about a factor of five over the last hundred years, with wild swings due to the Great Depression/WW2, what I assume is inflation in the 1970s, and the early-2000s housing bubble. And while the 1890s value is more similar to 2023, the ratio varied by tens of percentage points in the years around both of those dates. So it's not like the price of housing is stable if you use gold instead of dollars. (The post I'm replying to did not imply this. I mention it because there's a tendency to abuse these kinds of facts to construct neat little narratives about currency.)
- pjc50 3y ago
  > there's a tendency to abuse these kinds of facts to construct neat little narratives about currency People really want to simplify a complex system into a short tale which wraps everything up with a little bow on top and blames it on their enemies. Not exclusive to goldbugs, though.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
The stat I find most fascinating is the price of a bushel (60 pounds) of wheat over the last 750 years. In 1260 the price of wheat was 6-8 British shillings, aka 0.3 - 0.4 British pounds, which back then was actually worth 0.3 - 0.4 pounds of silver. The price then bounced around 1 pound per bushel for the next 650 years or so. And then I make the arbitrary but defensible switch to US dollars. Back then a British pound was worth about $5, and the price of a bushel of wheat has bounced around the $5/bushel mark for the last 100 years. Today, the price of wheat is $6.50/bushel. In other words, the price of wheat has tripled in 750 years in dollar terms. Inflation has tripled in my lifetime, but the price of wheat took 750 years to triple.

oldpersonintx 3y ago

the old maxim is that an ounce of gold would always buy a man a new suit, a meal, and a place to sleep for the night

curiousllama 3y ago

Lol I love this

nairboon 3y ago

So in terms of gold, real estate is currently kind of cheap?

randomdata 3y ago
Or gold is expensive.

foobarbaz33 3y ago

I forget where I heard it. Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today. Cold metal seems to act as cold storage of value across history.

kspacewalk2 3y ago
>Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today. Probably not during famines.
- ARandomerDude 3y ago
  Ackchyually...if you compare ancient famine surge pricing to modern, stable, non-famine pricing then probably not. But go somewhere on earth where famine is still a real thing without humanitarian aid and compare famine-to-famine pricing. I imagine it would probably be similar.
everforward 3y ago
That would be fascinating, if true. It requires balancing so many things. We keep mining, so supply is increasing, but so is population and thus demand. We keep making more efficient ways to mine silver which should make it cost more silver, but we are also getting more efficient at herding goats making it cheaper. It's crazy that many factors could be/stay in balance. It makes me wonder whether those factors are actually separate or whether these factors scale based on some common element like population.
- foobarian 3y ago
  Would be even crazier if the causality flows from the amount of the mineral available - i.e. can't have a larger population without mining more of the silver (which could be correlated with mining a whole bunch of other minerals involved in the supporting economy etc.).
o11c 3y ago
Hm, sources seem to vary a lot ... but they all seem to be within a single order of magnitude at least.
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
> Supposedly the amount of silver needed to buy a goat during Roman times is similar to today Interesting factoid if true, but it's hard to see how this could be anything other than coincidence. The relative scarcity, and demand, for goats vs silver must have changed massively due to things like modern factory farming, modern mechanized mining, modern fiat currency, modern food alternatives, etc, etc. So, if the price of goats in silver is in fact still the same, I don't think the takeaway should be that these two commodities can be assumed to still have the same relative supply vs demand of 2000 years ago, and that this proves that bullion is a good store of value (even if it is).
darth_avocado 3y ago
We can arbitrarily pick data points to prove a thesis, but that’s only one item. It is incredibly cheaper to do pretty much everything right now than it is during the Roman times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653366
pjc50 3y ago
Even the Romans had problems with debasement of the silver currency. As well as the real problem of a metal currency: specie shortage making it difficult to do large transactions at all sometimes.

ElevenLathe 3y ago

Gilded Age 2.

fullyAbstracted 3y ago

But the gold can only recently be held in an ETC and would cost money to securely store for most of that time. The house could be rented and yield an income.

legulere 3y ago
A house also needs upkeep. Usually that’s around the same amount as rent. In some markets like Munich rent is not even enough to pay that.

AdamH12113 3y ago

Just to be clear for anyone who didn't actually look at the graph, the ratio varies by about a factor of five over the last hundred years, with wild swings due to the Great Depression/WW2, what I assume is inflation in the 1970s, and the early-2000s housing bubble. And while the 1890s value is more similar to 2023, the ratio varied by tens of percentage points in the years around both of those dates. So it's not like the price of housing is stable if you use gold instead of dollars. (The post I'm replying to did not imply this. I mention it because there's a tendency to abuse these kinds of facts to construct neat little narratives about currency.)

pjc50 3y ago
> there's a tendency to abuse these kinds of facts to construct neat little narratives about currency People really want to simplify a complex system into a short tale which wraps everything up with a little bow on top and blames it on their enemies. Not exclusive to goldbugs, though.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

The stat I find most fascinating is the price of a bushel (60 pounds) of wheat over the last 750 years. In 1260 the price of wheat was 6-8 British shillings, aka 0.3 - 0.4 British pounds, which back then was actually worth 0.3 - 0.4 pounds of silver. The price then bounced around 1 pound per bushel for the next 650 years or so. And then I make the arbitrary but defensible switch to US dollars. Back then a British pound was worth about $5, and the price of a bushel of wheat has bounced around the $5/bushel mark for the last 100 years. Today, the price of wheat is $6.50/bushel. In other words, the price of wheat has tripled in 750 years in dollar terms. Inflation has tripled in my lifetime, but the price of wheat took 750 years to triple.