Stuff like that is misleading. There is FAR FAR more to the monetary control debate than "zomg the dollar is worth only a fraction of what it was!!!" Charts like that designed to get an emotional reaction out of people that don't think. Without even getting into details, just consider for a second that in 1900 people worked for pennies an hour. So, yes, the dollar was worth more, but that's only a tiny part of the story. You can't just look at relative value of a dollar and ignore all other factors.
I understand that it is a complex issue and that wages were lower in the 1900s than they are now, but the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar still means something. I want to learn more about the complex issues and discuss them with people. I'm willing to discuss them with you if you are interested.
The best place to start is to ask yourself... lost purchasing power against what? Who decided where to set the $1 baseline on that chart and what are they using to consider how value has fluctuated? It seems like they've used gold (no surprise there). Is a speculative metal like gold the best thing to use to determine relative purchasing power of the dollar?
Yes, it is. Because it has 5K years of history as the international baseline for money. The past 100 years is a small data set by comparison.
LOL You need to brush up on your history. Everything from rocks to cowhide to glass beads has been used as money.
And seashells, salt and nails. None of which has either the continuous duration of use nor the international scope that gold, silver, copper and yes, even mercury, has had. Ironicly, considering that citizens of the Roman Republic used nails as money for
at least two hundred years, and the trade value of same was so stable (until the Roman Empire began to debase the national currency) that the standard Roman sizes for nails were denominated in the smallest national currency, the Denarius. This is exactly why, in the United States, the AS metric for nail sizes is shown as a lower case "d"; the denarius became the pence, which became the penny. So you can go to any hardware store in the US and ask for an 8 "penny" (8 d) nail and they will know exactly what you are talking about. Yet, an 8 penny nail costs less than 8 pennies. Why? Due to productivity improvements in the production of nails, from the mining of iron ore all the way to the automated manufacturing of the flat nail head. A gold standard does not suffer from the distortions that changes in technology to any degree that is the case for nails, mercury, cow hides or glass beads. Or even for
salt. Certainly a gold standard has it's own problems, but those are well known problems that are difficult (probably impossible) for individuals, no matter how well connected or well heeled, to distort for any significant duration or degree.
If only the fiat currencies of the world could have had nearly the success of the Roman black iron nail as a trade unit, we wouldn't be having this conversation for another 100 years, and there wouldn't likely have ever been a need for Bitcoin at all.