Average American will get eaten alive

Monday, August 31, 2026

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Our old friend Jeff Deist, former president of the Mises Institute, spoke in a recent speech about some themes you've heard before -- and some you haven't:

He ran through the astonishing material abundance we take for granted, then noted that younger generations aren't sharing in the optimism that accompanied it -- they're struggling with housing, debt, family formation, and above all a feeling of dread that things won't improve.

He recommended Anna Eisenmenger's Blockade, the diary of an Austrian woman watching a sophisticated, prosperous society disintegrate into starvation and prostitution during the Weimar hyperinflation.

The heart of the talk was Jeff's grandfather: a Depression-era man who became an electrician by correspondence course, got a mortgage on the strength of his job and reputation from a bank whose lending rates actually reflected local savings, and got ahead through nothing more exotic than spending less than he earned -- the old-fashioned virtue of thrift.

Jeff proposed what he called the "grandfather index," which is a good proxy for how favorable your economy is to normal human flourishing. This index is the spread between the simple, low-risk savings rate available to ordinary people (that they typically get from their local bank) and the real rate of consumer inflation. When that number is negative, average people are getting poorer no matter what they do.

Jeff made a plausible case that it is several points negative today.

What does that mean? It means that in order just to break even, just to maintain their current purchasing power, they can't just save their money. They have to "worry about chasing yield," said Jeff.

But average people, he went on, "should not have to time the market. They should not have to be stock market experts. They shouldn't have to sit around and watch CNBC all day and try to figure out how to beat these quants and these algorithms who do it 60 hours a week professionally, and they still lose their shirts half the time. We really expect average people to do that."

They have to do it because their money is so bad they can't just save it and be done. They have to turn to these other things and hope for the best.

And the fact is this, said Jeff: everything political gets worse. Why should we expect our money to be any different?

The average person is going to get eaten alive.

The average person doesn't understand what is going on, and doesn't realize that in the current circumstances he absolutely has to make a deliberate effort to counteract the destruction of his purchasing power if he doesn't want to get wiped out.

I feel fortunate that I happen to know about major life hacks that unfortunately for them, most people have never heard of, but which have helped me flourish through difficult times: CrowdHealth as an alternative to the American medical insurance system, Low Stress Options as a calculated way to stay well ahead of inflation, and Monetary Metals to help me make the most of my gold.

Every one of these things was created by a brilliant founder who looked at a screwed-up system and pioneered a solution that would benefit anyone smart enough to find it and adopt it.

I own gold because of its track record over many, many centuries of holding and even increasing its purchasing power. But gold just sits there collecting dust. It doesn't generate an income for you.

Until now.

Jeff Deist's current project is Monetary Metals, by which you can earn interest on your gold, paid in gold.

You can let your gold sit around like a lazy bum, earning nothing for you, or you can let it earn, say, 4% with Monetary Metals.

You are getting paid for something you're already doing: owning gold.

We need every ally we can find in the struggle against the destruction of our money. Monetary Metals is one of them. Your friends have never heard of it. You have, because you subscribe to this newsletter.

Click to check it out, and you're welcome:
 
Tom Woods






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Tom Woods · PO Box 701447 · Saint Cloud, FL 34770 · USA

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