A Digression on US Gold Dollar Coinage
(A very shortened version of this ended up in the book. It should be obvious where this was cut out.)
The real coins are, like they were before 1933 and the attempted soft-commie takeover of the US by FDR, an alloy consisting of 90% gold – .999 “pure”, typically – to 10% copper. A one-ounce gold dollar actually contains a bit more than an ounce of alloy, to ensure it contains exactly one ounce of gold – which is worth, because the US government decrees it, $20,000 in our fiat paper currency. Which sounds like a lot of money, but it isn’t; because of the idiocy of the federal government back in the late ‘20’s, $20K in paper money is worth $20 in gold. And the one-ounce coins are denominated as 20 US Gold Dollars. It’s part of a government program to cut the three zeros off the end and make prices halfway reasonable again. Grumpaw talks about how, back in the early 2020’s, he used to be able to get a fast food hamburger for five or six bucks, or one served at a sit-down restaurant for maybe ten or twelve. He could get filet mignon at a fancy place for fifty. That seems like a fairy tale to most of us born in the last 70 years or so.
Anyway, the point of all the folderol with the alloy is to discourage melting the coins down for their gold content. You want bullion coins, go buy them from the Mint at a hefty markup, AKA “seigniorage” – and put them the fuck away in your safe, dude. The ones we actually spend on a daily basis are the 90/10 alloy. The ones the RIFs counterfeit are alloy, too – the alloy just has more base metal (copper) in it, so they’re 80/20. Even though they look like the real thing on the surface, they’re actually pretty easy to detect, by weight if nothing else (the fakes mass about seven and a quarter percent less), and since it is possible though difficult to melt them down and extract the gold, we don’t take as much official notice of it as we probably should. If the RIFs ever start drastically reducing the amount of gold they use, though, we’ll have to go find their clandestine mint and blow it to hell like we did that drug kitchen. As it is, all gold dollar-denominated coins now get carefully measured, weighed, and stamped with “80” by the banks when they find counterfeits. And thereafter, they’re worth only 80 gold cents, in the case of the gold dollar coin, or $16, in the case of the $20.
You may ask why the Treasury seemingly doesn’t care. Remember, this isn’t fiat currency, counterfeiting of which they do still pounce on; it’s real money with actual worth. And the counterfeit coins are worth at least partial face value, because they contain x amount of gold, and since they are passed off as U.S. currency, the gold they contain accrues to our national worth – not to that of the mullahs. If the mullahs want to give us free money, they’re more than welcome to do so.
Note, they’ve never tried counterfeiting the fiat currency. It’s nearly impossible to counterfeit now, and I know but won’t go into why, but trust me, it’s not worth the trouble. Detectors can see it coming a mile away, even through those “scan-proof” wallets people use, and the flashing lights and hooting alarms when someone carrying it tries to walk into a bank or a shop that has the detectors installed is embarrassing as hell. In high school civics, we all get a chance to try. It will put you off that shit and on the track of clean living for life.
I should note, in passing, that trying to print either gold coins or paper fiat currency on your home printer fails instantly, and – bonus! – gets you a nearly-instantaneous visit from some very unamused gentlemen and ladies from the Department of the Treasury, who are there to serve you with certain papers and fit you for some lovely steel jewelry. And even though that’s general knowledge and also taught in high school civics, they still make about a thousand of those “visits” a year. The mill run of people are and remain idiots, even in the 22nd Century.
So, overly-long coinage digression over,