A rising CAD wage looks like progress. It is the illusion. This page is the spread between the fiat dollar and hard money: hours of work to buy 1 oz of gold, and hours to 1 BTC versus hours to the 2010 dollar price of that same coin. Compare the nominal hourly wage to the gold-equivalent wage — that hour paid as a constant gold amount from 1971. The shaded gap is the CAD/hour loss. Cars barely moved — that is productivity, not the unit going up.

(QC hourly × 2,080) / gold.json CAD · 2,080 = 40×52, not official annual earnings · gold CAD from 1957. Same shape as Anton Liubich’s US century in gold ounces (Aug 19, 2026) — not a US BLS wage series.

The metal did not run out. Gold stock rose 1929–31 ($4.10 billion in Oct 1929 to $4.45 billion in Sep 1931). What failed was a fractional-reserve banking system on a legal gold-cover rule: the public and foreigners asked for the gold the notes promised, free gold ran out, and convertibility stopped. The policy answer was not “find more gold.” It was confiscation at $20.67, then a 69% official rise in the dollar price of the same ounce ($20.67 → $35), which marked up the Treasury’s gold in dollars ($4,033 million → $7,438 million) and loosened the cover constraint. That is a devaluation of the paper claim — the first modern act of the fiat model this page measures. Bretton Woods later locked $35 until 1971.

Official mint $20.67 (to 1933) and $35 (Jan 31 1934) are labeled separately from the gold.json market series (1933 $24.44, 1934 $34.94). Gold stock $4.10B → $4.45B is two cited prints, not a plotted series; revaluation $4,033M → $7,438M is the same ounces at the new dollar price. Sources: Federal Reserve History, Roosevelt's Gold Program; FRASER/Meltzer; EO 6102 (presidency.ucsb.edu); NBER w26085; FRED M1437BUSM144NNBR note; Friedman & Schwartz, A Monetary History (1963); gold.json / MeasuringWorth.

Official CPI is a different stick. Here inflation is the year-on-year change in the CAD price of one ounce of gold. From 1971 to 2025 that price compounded at 9.20%/yr (C$41.41 → C$4,809.51, about 116×). Québec’s nominal wage compounded at 4.60%. The gap is the stolen share — 1 − nominal / gold-wage. Holding a 1971 gold hour means a wage or portfolio must compound at that gold CAD CAGR. Beating gold means strictly above it. Pre-tax overlays at 30 / 40 / 50% are labeled scenarios, not an official Canadian tax series — state-share tax-to-GDP is still being collected.

Headline is the nominal price, not total return — dividends are not in these ounces. 1871–2025 is Shiller’s December monthly average of daily closes, not December 31. 2026-08-20 is a live Yahoo ^GSPC print. The honest companion is the same index in ounces of gold.

Asked as productive versus unproductive, and what part of a gold hour inflation and tax take from the productive. Official tables do not publish an “unproductive” count. state_share is general government expenditure / GDP. transfer_share is cash social benefits to households / GDP — the “supporting the other part of society” cash slice. Health and education sit inside state_share (final consumption), not in that cash transfer line. tax_share is OECD tax-to-GDP. private_share = 100 − state_share is a residual of the expenditure ratio, not a productivity census and not 1 minus public employment. Public employment % (StatCan LFS / BLS CES) includes schools and hospitals — do not call teachers or nurses unproductive. That employment share is flat-to-down while spending and transfers rose. Inflation steal is already on the page (2025 90.2%). Tax on the remaining hour is OECD Taxing Wages PIT+employee SSC where the series exists (2000–2025); earlier Canada years use SNA household PIT / wages and are labeled. Combined remaining = after-tax nominal / gold-wage.

One series for now: Bitcoin-era market price from 2010-07-18 (first CoinMetrics print $0.08584 / C$0.089462). Monthly closes, then last-365 daily. CAD before the CoinGecko window is USD × FRED CAD/USD. No 2009 genesis placeholder. Log is the default read from eight cents to six figures.

FX (report only, not a tile conversion): CA M2+ US$2,448.2B at BoC 2026-06-30 1.4210 · CA net debt US$969.4B at 2025-03-31 1.4376 · CA GDP US$2,382.9B at 2026-03-31 1.3939 · US M2 C$32,913.5B at 2026-06-30 1.4210 · US debt C$55,621.9B at 2026-08-18 1.3889 · US GDP C$46,147.3B at 2026-06-30 1.4210. Latest-FX column in the report is not used here.

Headline OI is a major-venue lower bound (Binance/Bybit/OKX/Bitget/HTX/Gate linear + OKX/Bybit/BitMEX inverse + CoinGecko Hyperliquid). 24h liq and hourly bars are AskSurf BTC aggregates. A side is obliterated if 24h ≥ 3× the 7-day median of that side and ≥ $100M.