[RKV]

This USED to be the way the world worked. Until Nixon that is.

[Richard Kimball]

Johnson started it when he went to junk metal for coins in 1964. He did it because the government printing presses were running overtime to pay for the Great Society, and the silver in a quarter was worth more than the face value of the coin.

Nixon was also a big spender. He went off the gold standard for the same reasons Johnson quit using silver in coins. FWIW, the Morgan silver dollars were about .77 ounces, and with the price of silver at $13, their silver value is around $10. A silver dime is worth around .94. That's silver content only, not including numismatic value. Roughly, that means if you chopped one zero off, money value would be equivalent to what it was in 1964.

Others here disagree, but barring stuff like televisions and computers where manufacturing has gotten so much more efficient that costs have dropped dramatically, about 90% of our monetary worth is due to inflation.