A generation ago, a single income could support a family, buy a house and pay for a vehicle or two in the driveway.Today, even two high earners are struggling to purchase a new home.According to a recent report from Bankrate, a household earning $80,000 a year is now priced out of 75% of all new homes on the market. A family now needs to earn at least $113,000, and in some major metros, it’s closer to $200,000.Meanwhile, the homeownership rate has slipped to a six-year low, with further declines expected next year. Families are being squeezed from every angle.The point I want to make here is that the so-called affordability crisis isn’t just about the cost of homes or other assets. It’s about the cost of money.The Dollar Has Been in a Century-Long Bear MarketTake a look at the chart below. It compares the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar since 1915 to the price of gold over the same period.What it shows is that the greenback has lost over 95% of its purchasing power. Gold, by contrast, has exploded, especially during periods of fiscal and economic strain.Politicians and pundits may blame greedy corporations or inefficient supply chains, but here’s the truth: when a government runs endless deficits and finances them with fiat created out of thin air, the currency itself becomes the source of the problem.We can trace it all back to 1971 when President Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold. As I shared with you before, that was the day the U.S. traded fiscal discipline for a floating exchange rate.Once the tether to gold was severed, spending exploded. Government debt soared from less than 40% of GDP to well over 120% today.In short, when money becomes untethered from reality, everything priced in dollars becomes harder to afford.And that takes us back to housing.U.S. Housing Looks Historically Cheap… When Priced in GoldThe next chart might surprise you. It shows the ratio of the median price of a new home divided by the price of gold. Essentially, it tells you how many ounces of the precious metal it takes to buy a typical American home.We all know that, in dollar terms, housing is expensive right now. According to the Census Bureau, the median price for a new home in August was $413,500, a nearly 5% jump from the price in July. Remember, that’s the median price, meaning half of all available homes for sale are even more expensive.But the chart shows housing priced not in dollars but in gold, and you’ll notice three instances when the median home cost roughly 100 ounces: 1980, 2011 and 2025.This tells me the affordability crisis isn’t necessarily being driven by runaway home prices, but by the continued weakening of the dollar as well as the cost of borrowing.Examining housing through a gold lens exposes what the consumer price index (CPI) and political messaging hide—namely, the real culprit is the currency.That’s why I, along with many others, consider gold to be real money. It doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t get revised by government bureaucrats. It doesn’t depend on congressional budget committees or Federal Reserve projections.Think about that next time you hear about a housing bubble. The real bubble may be the debt-fueled system we’re using to measure value.The Fiat Era Has Failed to Deliver Price StabilityThis isn’t just an American problem, of course.The chart below, taken from a Deutsche Bank report, shows average annual inflation for 152 countries since 1971. Not one major economy has kept inflation below 2% over the past half-century. Most countries have averaged between 4% and 10%, but some—Argentina, Brazil, Turkey—have suffered a “near-total currency collapse,” according to Coin Bureau.✨FIAT IS IN AN ETERNAL BEAR MARKET!Since Bretton Woods ended in 1971, no economy has kept inflation below 2%.The US, Canada, China, and France averaged ~4%, while Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela saw near-total currency collapse.Inflation fuels gold and crypto! pic.twitter.com/5mCChTTix0— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) August 9, 2025Gold Is Real Money, Fiat Is TemporaryOnce again, gold is real money, whereas fiat is temporary. In an era of record national debt, rising inflation and geopolitical uncertainty, I believe it’s prudent and rational to follow the Golden Rule: a 10% weighting in gold—half in bullion, half in high-quality gold mining stocks—rebalanced annually.This simple strategy has helped preserve wealth across every monetary regime in history, from the Roman Empire to Bretton Woods.President Donald Trump calls the affordability crisis a hoax. In truth, the lack of affordability is real for many families right now, but the cause isn’t homebuilders or landlords or banks. The cause is the steady erosion of fiat’s purchasing power. Gold is simply the mirror reflecting the truth.***All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice. Some of these opinions may not be appropriate to every investor. By clicking the links above, you will be directed to a third-party website. U.S. Global Investors does not endorse all information supplied by these websites and is not responsible for their content.The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by consumers for a representative basket of consumer goods and services. The CPI measures inflation as experienced by consumers in their day-to-day living expenses.