Your dollar has lost 96-97 percent of its purchasing power since 1913. This is not bad luck or mysterious market forces. It is the result of deliberate policy choices that steadily, quietly drained your wealth—and convinced you it was being done for your benefit. The World That Was Stolen For over a hundred years after America’s founding—roughly 1774 to 1900—prices did not steadily rise. Net cumulative inflation over that entire century was close to zero. Prices often fell, not because of poverty or collapse, but because of human ingenuity: more efficient factories, labor-saving machines