We are still suffering today from the baleful consequences of August 15, 1971, when President Nixon ended the convertibility of United States dollars into gold.

If after that fateful day the United States had maintained the average rate of economic growth that it had achieved over the previous 180 years, when it operated under a gold standard, the economy would be at least 50% larger than it is today.

Ponder that for a moment. The median, pre-pandemic American household income in 2019 would have been $100,000, not the actual $66,000.

From the 1790s when the dollar was first linked to gold to the 1970s when that link was sundered, there had been interruptions because of major wars and two dollar devaluations, one small, the other a big one during the Great Depression. Yet it was always understood that the dollar’s value had to be linked to the yellow metal.

Why?

We all know markets work best with fixed weights and measures. The size of a gallon of gasoline doesn’t fluctuate each day, nor does the number of minutes in an hour nor the number of inches in a foot. A pound has 16 ounces. Those values are all constant.

Money is a measure of value and works best when that value is stable, just like those inches in a foot. For a variety of reasons, gold keeps its intrinsic value better than anything else on earth and has for 4,000 years. In that sense, it is like a yardstick. Not perfect, but the best we have.

When you see the dollar price of gold fluctuate, what you’re seeing is the value of the dollar fluctuating. Gold is the constant.

Economies can’t grow without investment. You get more long-term, productive investment when the value of money is not constantly fluctuating. Investing is risky enough, but if you don’t know what the value of the dollar will be in the future, time horizons shorten. Hedging and currency speculation become endemic. The average daily turnover of currency trading is now more than $5 trillion, far in excess of what is needed to efficiently finance global trade.

The myths surrounding gold — it causes deflation, depressions, agricultural distress, teenage acne, etc. — are numerous and false. The gold-based Bretton Woods system that was created in the closing days of World War II and blown-up on August 15, 1971, had worked remarkably well. Western Europe and Japan boomed, quickly surpassing prewar levels of production, growth that did not occur at the expense of America.

True, the closing of the gold window on that day was meant to be temporary. Alas, though, our leaders of 50 years ago and most economists didn’t understand the basics of a gold-based system. They didn’t know how to adapt and manage it. Their heirs today, smitten by fads like Modern Monetary Theory, are even more clueless.

Yet there is an awakening in Congress that the enormous money creation prompted by the Covid crisis threatens a new wave of inflation. Senator Rick Scott of Florida is pressing this issue. Senator Ted Cruz raised it in the 2016 Republican primaries. Senator Rand Paul and Mike Lee understand what’s at stake. Even Democratic centrist Joe Manchin has written Chairman Powell requesting the Fed cut back on its ultra loose policy.

Now is a moment when new leadership can point the way to ending half a century of America’s monetary mistakes.

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Mr. Forbes is the author of, among other books, “Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It.” Image: Drawing by Elliott Banfield, courtesy of the artist.