• The Collapse in Bitcoin Terms
• The Illusion of Growth in Fiat
• The Expansion of Money vs. the Stagnation of Wages
• What This Says About Labor

For most of human history, people worked for something tangible — gold, grain, land, or a direct claim on production.

Today, we work for fiat: government-issued money that can be created without limit and that loses purchasing power every year.

Using Social Security’s National Average Wage Index (AWI) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, we can measure the real progress of the average American worker over the past decade.

Adjusted for inflation, wages rose only about 12% from 2014 to 2024.

In other words, a worker today earns slightly more in purchasing power than a decade ago — at least in dollars.

But when those same wages are measured against Bitcoin, the story reverses completely.

In 2014, the average salary of $46,481 could buy 145 BTC.

By 2023, even at a nominal wage of $66,622, it could buy only 1.58 BTC — a 99% collapse in real terms if Bitcoin is the measuring stick.

And by 2024, even with higher wages of roughly $69,622, the same worker could purchase less than one Bitcoin — about 0.75 BTC.

§The Collapse in Bitcoin Terms

Each year, the average salary buys fewer Bitcoin — the inverse of fiat debasement.

In 2014, one worker’s annual income could purchase what would now be considered generational wealth.

By 2024, that same average salary buys less than one coin.

§The Illusion of Growth in Fiat

In “real” dollars, the story feels different — slow, steady progress.

Yet even here, inflation quietly erodes what those numbers mean.

The line drifts upward, but not in proportion to the expansion of money itself.

§The Expansion of Money vs. the Stagnation of Wages

If the purchasing power of wages tells one story, the growth of the money supply tells another.

Since 2014, the total U.S. money supply (M2) has nearly doubled, rising from around $11.7 trillion to more than $21 trillion in 2024.  

During that same period, the average American’s real wage — adjusted for inflation — rose by only about 12%.

This divergence reveals what the official numbers obscure: the vast expansion of currency outpaces the modest gains of labor.  

The average worker is earning slightly more nominal dollars, but those dollars represent a far smaller claim on the real economy.  

Productivity may rise — but monetary expansion ensures that the value captured by the worker does not.

The result is a quiet expropriation of time.  

More money exists, yet each unit buys less of the world — and less of your labor.

§What This Says About Labor

It says that labor, when denominated in fiat, is trapped in a system where the measuring stick itself is shrinking.

Workers run faster each year, yet stand in the same place — or slide backward.

Meanwhile, those who save in Bitcoin are measuring their labor against something that cannot be inflated away.

“Why do I work for fiat?” isn’t just a rhetorical question — it’s a mirror held up to our economic incentives.

If our time is scarce and money is not, we’re exchanging something finite for something infinite.

So I keep asking myself: if my labor is priced in something that loses value by design, what am I really earning?

Each year the numbers grow, but the measure shrinks.

Maybe the question isn’t why do I work for fiat — but whether it’s still possible to live for something real.

Can a person — or a society — live on a Bitcoin standard?

That’s a question for another day, but one that’s getting harder to ignore.

In a world of infinite money, only scarce time and scarce truth remain valuable. Bitcoin protects both.

Tags: #Bitcoin #SoundMoney #Fiat #Labor #PurchasingPower #MoneySupply #Inflation #FixTheMoneyFixTheWorld #BitcoinStandard #WhyWorkForFiat