Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/141

4] Bureau of Labor Statistics in making up its index number of prices. The entire list, of which the articles specified are the more important, is actually worth about one dollar to-day.

If we could, in some way, make our gold dollar equivalent to such a market-basket dollar, i.e. a composite dollar consisting of a big basket or package containing those bits of goods, that composite basketful of commodities—or "goods-dollar," let us call it—would evidently have to be worth a dollar at all times; and the cost of living—at least the cost of the representative assortment in that basket—could not rise or fall. That assortment would always cost a dollar simply because a dollar was the equivalent of that assortment. In short, it would be just as simple then to keep the price of the composite basketful of commodities invariable (however widely its constituents might vary among themselves) as it is now to keep the price of gold invariable. The price of that composite would always be a dollar, just as to-day the price of gold is always $20.67 an ounce, and just as, under an egg standard, the price of a dozen eggs would always be a dollar, and just as, with an alloy of gold and silver, the price of that alloy would be constant, however much its constituents might vary relatively to one another.

And this composite goods-dollar is not altogether a joke. I am going to suggest its adoption—indirectly, at least!

4. The Gold Standard Not to Be Abandoned

Some literal-minded reader is now eager to point out how inconvenient, not to say grotesque, such a market-basket dollar would be if it were in circulation or were