Nations collapse because they levy excessive taxes and waste the money on useless things that provide no real benefit. In this process, their money automatically decreases in value.
The United States is, at least in the short term, utterly defiant of all economic laws. Recently, legislation had to be proposed to make it illegal for people to melt down, or to export, pennies and nickels to melt down for scrap which would then be sold and exchanged for paper dollars. This is one of the most bizarre monetary happenings in history.
The purchasing power of the dollar, which is made out of paper, goes down by half its value about every ten years.
The value of the metal in pennies and nickel is going up, sometimes at the rate of ten percent a year. Four pennies are now worth almost a nickel. Each nickel is worth nearly seven pennies.
If this continues, the value of a penny will eventually surpass the value of the same dollar that is, unbelievably, being claimed to be worth one hundred pennies. Today, a dollar is worth less than fifty 1990 pennies, and is only worth 12 and a half 1975 pennies.
In another ten years, the dollar will only be worth six 1975 pennies. Before that, the dollar and the penny will have reached parity.
No nation can survive such fiscal weirdness, but to coin collectors, it makes cents.
