"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984
Don't get your hopes up, if we went back to the gold standard Billionaires would just corner the market and fuck us anyways. We're well past that course of action.
Unfortunately nearly every graph on that page is intentionally misleading. If you actually adjust the graphs for inflation (where it's relevant), 1971 looks like just another year.
Go watch some price is right episodes on YouTube — one from each year of the 1970s. It’s astounding how much the prices drastically change on automobiles and food just over a year or two.
Strangely, basic clothes washers, dryers, refrigerators, and stoves seem have the same pricing as today.
It’s not really that strange when considering cars have been progressively held to higher safety standards for carrying a human being, while those other devices have not.
You are leaving out the fact that manufacturing methods have drastically increased in sophistication and machines are building most of the cars today, not the costs of the cars have increased but the earnings of the companies, household items have drastically changed in safety standards as well (fuses, electronics, handbooks) compared to their relatively low complexity.
Yeah, I’m not really the best person to speak to this myself as I don’t know a lot about the auto industry.
It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, I just wish we had a more equitable system to avoid artificial price increases.