system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Could somebody explain why the US is not on the gold standard?

And for what reason it is more useful to us as a country? and perhaps what exactly our current system it?
gpt
The Gold Standard, as the name suggests meant that all money issued by the U.S government was effectively a certificate that one could redeem for a fixed amount of gold. The U.S Government could only print as much money as it had gold reserves, because every 'dollar' had to have a corresponding amount of gold stored somewhere for which it could be redeemed. 

The advantage of this system was stability, and resistance to inflation. A government couldn't print absurd amounts of money and thus devalue their own currency (like the pre-Nazi German Government did) and money retains its value because it can always be traded in for gold. 

There are a number of disadvantages though:

- Economists believe that being on the gold standard makes a recession much harder to escape. If your government can only print as much money as it has gold, it can't inject money into the economy during times of weakness. 

- There's only a finite amount of Gold in the world. The amount of money circulating in the U.S alone right now is more than the value of all the gold that has ever been mined in the entire world put together. 

- Economists believe that what you want for a currency is a slow, gradual rate of inflation because it encourages people to spend, invest or deposit their money rather than store it in a mattress. A gradual, predictable inflation rate is most easily achieved without the gold standard. 

**What the U.S has now:**

The U.S currently operates what is called a *fiat currency*, which is a fancy way of saying "not tied to a specific commodity like gold or silver. Basically, the U.S dollar has value because the government says it does. The government is willing to accept these specific pieces of paper as taxes and charges. 

The actual 'value' of the U.S dollar is determined by the market and the laws of supply and demand. Traders exchange their currencies for U.S dollars at the best possible rate they can get. The going rate at any given time is the value of the U.S dollar.