[goodcanadian]

As a sibling comment said, gold was effectively money. Having more money, without having more products to buy, effectively triggered massive inflation. Prices went up, but the actual supply of goods and services didn't change much. The Spanish economy suffered massive inflation, as did Europe in general to a lessor extent.

[nickff]

Notably, the 'massive inflation' was a rate of 1-1.5% per year...

[AnimalMuppet]

Which, for the gold standard, is still rather shocking.

[ijk]

It's interesting that mining gold and silver is similar to printing more money; we usually think of inflation as represented by debasing coinage but there's been a few circumstances where flooding the local economy with precious metals is the same effect.

[nradov]

We sometimes see similar localized effects when wealthy foreign governments and NGOs go into poor countries to "help" with foreign aid and investment. When done correctly this can boost the local economy in a sustainable way, kind of priming the pump. But often it just dumps a lot of cash in, causing price inflation as the supply of goods and services fails to keep pace with the supply of money.

[Gibbon1]

In the latter 1800 there wasn't enough gold to accommodate the vast increases in industrial production. Which was deflationary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech

You can imagine every year the price per bushel of the wheat you grow drops and your mortgage stays the same. When your whole economy is like that no one wants to borrow or lend money and investment slows.

[venturecruelty]

No, inflation is just an increase in prices. Insisting it is only due to an increase in the money supply is an RW talking point.