I look at near term scenarios to understand it.
In about 2014, I went to a ford dealer and inquired about buying a new quad cab F150 XLT 4x4 on my corporate deal. He said, net, with any trade in, it would be $ 34K.
I changed jobs, and in Jan 2017, a guy that worked for me bought an equivalent Tundra and he paid $ 40K out the door.
Last year, my neighbor went and bought an equivalent Silverado at Costco and he paid $ 55K all in.
So this is kinda the story we are in. My insurance quadrupled last year. The replacement value on my house is double what it used to be, 17 years ago. Zillow says this house is worth like 3x what I paid for it. What I envied of my boss 30 years ago is habbening to me.
However, I seem to recall the goldbugs doing the oy vey in the early 2000's and gold is now only around $ 2K/oz. Thus real value has not changed but fiat is getting worth less and less. This is just a common sense analysis, not verified by charts and such but maybe a real financefag can chime in and provide real sauce on what is going on.