It’s testament to the depth of America’s inflation scourge — also known as the affordability crisis — that some of the country’s highest earners “are feeling squeezed” by “the rising cost of living,” Fortune reports. It’s a symptom, too, of the age of fiat money. Even those earning six-figure incomes “are financially anxious,” says the Harris Poll’s Libby Rodney, “living the illusion of affluence while privately juggling credit cards, debt, and survival strategies.” 

Fortune marks “a surprising sense of economic anxiety,” as nearly two-thirds of high-earners say “their income isn’t a milestone for success but merely the bare minimum for staying afloat.” Americans earning $200,000 and more turn, Fortune reports, “to financial tactics that are often associated with less wealthy consumers.” Some 64 percent are using reward points for essentials, and 50 percent use “buy now, pay later” to buy items costing less than $100.

High earners, too, are “avoiding expenses,” Fortune says. Almost half “skipped a social event so they wouldn’t have to split a check,” while 45 percent said they “held off on medical care because of the cost.” Maintaining the pretense of a comfortable living, per Harris, “is exhausting,” and lurking “behind the image of success,” are “quiet sacrifices.” To explain why a six-figure income is no longer enough for a comfortable living, feature our monetary system.

Today’s challenge of affordability, after all, is inseparable from the collapse in value of the dollar. A fiat dollar lacks any intrinsic value. That’s a contrast with America’s historic system of honest money, under which a dollar was convertible into specie — gold or silver — at a rate fixed by law. That system ended in 1971 when America abrogated its pledge to redeem in gold any dollars presented by foreign governments, per the Bretton Woods agreement. 

Since then, the dollar has been what honest money advocates call “irredeemable electronic paper ticket legal tender.” As a result, the dollars by which today’s Americans measure their income aren’t worth what they used to be. To grasp the depth of this default, feature the dollar’s plunge in terms of gold. Seen through that lens, it’s no wonder high earners are dismayed to find their dollars don’t go as far as they expected.

In 1971, when a dollar was worth a 35th of a gold ounce, a six-figure annual salary was the equivalent of some 2,800 ounces of gold. In trading today, though, a dollar fetches less than a 4,300th of an ounce. That means today’s six-figure salary is the equivalent of just 23 ounces of gold. Viewed another way, with gold as the yardstick of value, the gold value of the six-figure salary of 1971 in terms of today’s debased fiat dollars would come to $12 million. 

Nor is it surprising that the conventional wisdom of the age of fiat money is to ignore the inconvenient drop in the dollar’s value. Earlier generations, though, grasped that a dollar convertible into gold was the surest way to preserve the currency’s value and to hold prices steady over the long term. By contrast, today’s Federal Reserve promotes a policy of 2 percent annual inflation, a rate that halves Americans’ savings within 36 years. Hard not to notice.

Senator Wallace Bennett of Utah, as far back as 1957, cautioned that “inflation seems to be becoming acceptable,” as economists endorsed “creeping” increases in prices like the Fed’s target. He warned that if “government creates money faster than its citizens create value,” that “does not create wealth, it only creates inflation, which is the illusion of wealth.” Nearly 70 years later, today’s high earners are learning Bennett’s lesson the hard way.