As a nation we are seventeen trillion dollars in debt and the sad thing is that number is still on the rise (Dinan, U.S. Tops $17 Trillion for First Time). One of the biggest questions citizens people of the United States have today are asking is what is the government going to do to change that doing about it. A great deal of controversy has been created to try and reverse the problem of debt. The risk of using the gold standard is an unstable economy but yet it is still being considered. Citizens who live in the United States should care about this because debt effects everybody in a nation. One option that always crosses peoples’ minds in times where there is a recession or decline in money value is switching over to the gold standard. One of the sources that I will use is from the website procon.org. This website is a nonprofit public charity that is nonpartisan and presents controversial issues. The gold standard was used prior to 1971 and people still feel like it is an option today (Procon.org). The gold standard is a monetary system with gold of specified weight and fineness as the unit of value (dictionary.com). I do not think the gold standard is a good idea because there is too much uncertainty, times have changed since the time that it was used to exist and it has vulnerability to the production of gold production. Firstly, there is too much uncertainty in the gold standard. The nation is not in any position to be taking up any ideas that they think will work. It would be different if the nation had room to for example lose money but they are far away from being in that position. When as a nation, debt is in the trillions, everything is looked at more seriously. I think the government is better off keeping things the way they are. The fiat monetary system has its good with the bad but at least there is not really any uncertainty, it is known to some degree of what can occur. Obviously, the value of the dollar has not been known to be all too stable but at the end of the day it is better than starting over. “One lesson that we can definitely take from the past is in 1982 when the annual inflation was at 10.3%" (Procon.org). This occurrence made people want to go back to the gold standard also but it turned out that the gold standard is definitely not something to reside to after everything has already gone bad. “The commission concluded that restoring a gold standard does not appear to be a fruitful method for dealing with the continuing problem of inflation” (Procon.org). They did without the gold standard and eventually the inflation settled down to a more stable number. Even today, the gold standard is something that people should not reside to because the debt is like inflation. The debt that the United States that has been accumulated is building has went past dangerous levels alre