why is that there is no money value for human but for gold, iron, zinc, or stocks?
464100
There is a value for humans if it was legal for them to be sold.  See the old days when they sold and bought slaves.  They still do charge prices for the illegal human marketing of prostitutes and other such activities.
520928
the world is headed for a crisis- gold has an established history of being valuable in and of itself, so people switch from currency to gold if they feel that the currencies are unstable. it also means that people who understand market forces are seeing "other than hard value" commodities are a very high risk as they are "over" valued- and can't stay that way- also, the total debt of the US is staggering- and therefore what is there to back up the dollar? it's value is entirely theoretical- and won't stand in a crunch- so, buy gold, silver- have something on hand with real value.
878332
Im sorry but the people in third world countries are NOT being exploited. I have been to Indonesia (East Timor) twice. They are lucky and fortunate to even have a job. The value of currency in East Timor was 17,000 rupiahs to 1 Dollar when I was there in 2001. I've given dollars to children and fistfights would break-out because their family could live for a week on that amount. So in terms of the dollar, which they recently switched to, they make "crap" to you or me in America but in their country pennies per hour of work is sufficient to live on, so you should think about this from their perspective not yours. If they were paid relative to what we make the whole country would be millionaires in a week and then nobody would work and they would be right back to where they were 5 years ago with rampant inflation leading to another cycle of poverty.
215947
The short answer is: You look at the price of gold and the cost per ounce of recovering the gold. You also look at the amount of reserve that is believed to be in the mine (s). Mining companies are tough to value sometimes, because when the mine runs out they're basically worth the salvage value of the equipment if they don't find another great area to mine.
324063
"The issue of the value of money has come up in articles such as "Why Does Money Have Value?", "The Demand For Money", and "Prices and Recessions". However, I’ve never really answered the question “Why Not Just Print More Money”. So I’ll do that now. \nWouldn’t We All Be Wealthier If We Printed More Money?\nIf we print more money, prices will rise such that we’re no better off than we were before.  To see why, we’ll suppose this isn’t true, and that prices will not increase much when we drastically increase the money supply. Consider the case of the United States. Let’s suppose the United States decides to increase the money supply by mailing every man, woman, and child an envelope full of money. What would people do with that money? Some of that money will be saved, some might go toward paying off debt like mortgages and credit cards, but most of it will be spent. I know the first thing I’d do is go down to Walmart and buy an Xbox or PlayStation 2 (if you have an opinion of which I should buy e-mail me by using the feedback form). \nI’m not going to be the only one who runs out to buy an Xbox. This presents a problem for Walmart. Do they keep their prices the same and not have enough Xboxes to sell to everyone who wants one, or do they raise their prices? The obvious decision would be to raise their prices. If Walmart (along with everyone else) decides to raise their prices right away, we’d have massive inflation, and our money is now devalued. Since we’re trying to argue this won’t happen, we’ll suppose that Walmart and the other retailers don’t increase the price of Xboxes. For the price of Xboxes to hold steady, the supply of Xboxes will have to meet this added demand. If there are shortages, certainly the price will rise, as consumers who are denied an Xbox will offer to pay a price well in excess of what Walmart was formerly charging. \nFor the retail price of the Xbox not to rise, we will need the producer of the Xbox, Microsoft, to increase production to satisfy this increased demand. Certainly this will not be technically possible in some industries, as there are capacity constraints (machinery, factory space) that limit how much production can be increased in a short period of time. We also need Microsoft not to charge retailers more per system, as this would cause Walmart to increase the price they charged to consumers, as we’re trying to create a scenario where the price of the Xbox won’t rise. By this logic we also need the per-unit costs of producing the Xbox not to rise. This is going to be difficult as the companies that Microsoft buys parts from are going to have the same pressures and incentives to raise prices that Walmart and Microsoft do. If Microsoft is going to produce more Xboxes, they’re going to need more man hours of labor and obtaining these hours cannot add too much (if anything) to their per-unit costs, or else they will be forced to raise the price they charge retailers. \nWages are essentially prices; an hourly wage is the price a person charges for an hour of labor. It will be impossible for hourly wages to stay at their current levels. Some of the added labor may come through employees working overtime. This clearly has added costs, and workers are not likely to be as productive (per hour) if they’re working 12 hours a day than if they’re working 8. Many companies will need to hire extra labor. This demand for extra labor will cause wages to rise, as companies bid up wage rates in order to induce workers to work for their company. They’ll also have to induce their current workers not to retire. If you were given an envelope full of cash, do you think you’d put in more hours at work, or less? Labor market pressures require wages to increase, so product costs must increase as well.\nSo Prices Must Go Up!\nIn short prices will go up after a drastic increase in the money supply because: \n1.If people have more money,
225406
Basically the confidence people have in the currency and the stability and essential soundness of the country.  Money is of no inherent value by itself - it simply represents value.  The value is a judgment.  Money is a convenience for trade - without it all would be barter.
459666
Housing prices are getting ready to crash (at least in the USA), and mortgage rates are rising.  So real estate is not a good investment right now.  People like to put their money into something tangible, and since real estate is not good any more (stocks are out of the question - too unstable and people don't trust corporations), metals are the next best thing.  We're facing heavy inflation here, and gold and other precious metals tend to go up in real value in such circumstances.  Actually, prices, in real dollars adjusted for inflation are still quite low, historically speaking.  So many are buying now, which drives up the price.  Furthermore, many industrial uses for metals are increasing, especially in China.
488810
There are many.  Study the past few years.  Gold has been a great investment over the past year, but now it is going  down.  So buy something low and sell it high.  I think you should put some money into an online brokerage and buy a few stocks.   Right now world markets are down from their highs because interest rates have been going up in the USA.
693764
There is nothing free in the world.\nAnd if money was available without work,nobody\nwould work in the world!
132609
Why is there a thing like money?  What would you do instead to distribute goods and services?  A long time ago, people used to use barter a lot: trade one good or service for another.  But it is impractical to carry around what you produce in order to trade it with what they produce.  And what if A wants what B has, but B wants what C has, and does not need what A has?  So money came into existence to represent wealth, as a medium of exchange.  At first, it was made of precious metals that had a value relatively well known: an ounce of gold or silver had a pretty standard value in the community.  Now it is made out of paper, and no longer paper which can be exchanged for gold or silver.  We use it because we trust the next person will accept it, just like we did.\n\nActually, nowadays we more often use accounting records, created by computers, instead of the actual money.  So we are even deeper into symbolic wealth, rather than tangible wealth, like gold or silver or a barrel of pickles.
1138807
It becomes physically worth more because of this:\n(This is a really primitive example) Say stock XYZ is woth 1.00 dollars. Joe owns one share of XYZ that he wishes to sell. Paul heard that XYZ is coming out with a really cool new product, and he wants to invest in the company by buying one share of it. This creates demand for the stock, so price will increase. Paul agrees to buy his share from Joe for 1.01 dollars. He pays a premium of one cent because he created demand for it, and upon the transaction, that stock is up .01 cents that day.\nHope that helps...
1014280
money and value are relative terms.\neg if we have only 100 $ in the whole world then value will be fixed accordingly.\nnow u keep increasing this amount and value will be adjusting accordingly.\nin theory i must say that we have sufficient money vis-a vis\nthe value.
623319
Copper is a tricky one, as there appears to be true demand from China and not that many new ways of digging up significantly more ore.  It might be that people who rely on copper decide to find ways to get around using copper.  Maybe aluminum cable instead?\n\nIn the case of zinc, there is a special price level maybe 10% or so above where it is now, where it is worth melting US pennies (which are 97.5% zinc).  At this price the zinc and copper in pennies becomes worth more than one cent per penny, plus the energy needed to melt it down.  There will then be a huge amount of illegal melting of pennies and demand will be satisfied for awhile.\n\nIn summary I think copper might be higher, but there is a lot of uncertainty due to the various things that could happen, such as a decrease in copper demand.  And zinc price could be limited by penny melting.  I wouldn't invest much in this area personally.
938678
It is only as valuable as you make it. Ie Bill Gates, JayZ and Kanye West did not finish/go to college.
488022
It's all in your mind.  Some grades of paper are better than others (subjective measurement), and some metals used in coinage are more or less pure than others (also subjective, in terms of relative value, but objective in terms of purity).\n\nBut the 'value' assigned to currency is up to the marketplace to determine.
61025
it was used as fiat money--money was not backed up by physical commodity-so faith in gold was used to value said money
606559
THere are gold mines throughout the world. The largest mines are in Russia and So. Africa. There are many mines in the US West, and now, with the price over $700 per ounce, there is enough incentive to start digging again. \n\nThe problem is that the "easy" gold has largely been extracted already. The remaining gold is such a small proportion of the mined ore, that it's getting increasingly expensive to process.