Every few months, headlines announce that “gold has reached a new high.” These claims, while great for investors in gold, should make us pause and think.
The implication is that gold is becoming more valuable.
But wait, that doesn’t really make sense.
Gold hasn’t changed. It’s the same yellow metal it’s been for thousands of years. An ounce of gold doesn’t produce dividends, invent new technology, or suddenly become more useful than it was last week.
So why does its price climb higher and higher?
Well, because the thing we measure it in—the dollar—keeps shrinking.
You can think of it like a pot of soup that starts out as thick, hearty, and nourishing.
If you keep adding water though, it gets weaker and thinner. Eventually, it takes a lot more soup to get the same amount of nourishment.
The ingredients haven’t changed, but it isn't a very good soup anymore.
That’s inflation.
The dollar has been watered down so much, that it doesn’t deliver the same value it once did. It’s why the same gallon of milk or tank of gas looks “more expensive,” even though milk didn’t change and the tank gas didn’t change. The measuring stick changed.
This is why gold always appears to “rise.” It isn’t actually becoming more valuable because it is gold, it is becoming more expensive because the dollar is sinking.
The crazy thing is, most adults (even really smart ones!) have no idea what’s happening.
People are taught to think inflation is some natural phenomenon, like bad weather, that just rolls in from time to time. But that’s not true. Inflation is the deliberate outcome of a system designed to create money out of thin air.
G. Edward Griffin’s Creature from Jekyll Island does a great job at explaining how the Federal Reserve was created, not to protect your purchasing power, but to give politicians and bankers the ability to manipulate money at will. Inflation, then, isn’t an accident; it’s a hidden tax.
A tax that quietly takes value from savers and hands it to those who spend first—usually governments and big banks.
Yes. They’re really that diabolical.
So when you see that your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far, and that saving for the future feels like running up a down escalator, the answer isn’t just “things are expensive,” it's that your dollars buy less—by design.
And once you see it, you start to recognize it everywhere.
You see it in the shrinking box of cereal at the store, and in the way home prices keep spiraling further and further out of reach. You feel it late at night in that uneasy feeling that grinds in the pit of your stomach, and in the voice at the back of your head that whispers that no matter how hard you work, your money is running away from you faster than you can catch it.
It’s enough to radicalize you, isn’t it?
How dare they.
We turned Griffin’s book into The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island because we know that if kids grow up believing inflation is “just how things work,” they’ll never question the system quietly draining their future.
But if we can help them learn the real story—that inflation is man-made, and that money can be sound or unsound depending on what kind of money it is—they begin to see the world differently.
They learn that real value can never come from printing dollars, that saving is hard, but still essential, and most importantly, that freedom and sound money are inseparable.
We’re so committed to helping the rising generation learn the things we weren’t ever taught, that we even built an entire economics curriculum to help kids, teens, and even adults, learn to think about value, trade, incentives, and the forces shaping their lives.
This back-to-school season, we’ve bundled our best-selling books, audiobooks, workbooks, and parent guides at our biggest discount of the year. If you want to get a head start on teaching the principles and ideas that lead to human flourishing and prosperity, this is the time to shop.
Check out our Back to School sale now!
At the end of the day, it really isn’t about gold or dollars or shady government tricks—it’s about truth.
Do we let our kids inherit comforting illusions?
Or do we equip them to see reality for themselves?
I know what I choose, and I suspect you feel the same.
— Connor
