This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both money and gold. The supposed value of gold is every bit as ephemeral as the value of the dollar, more so given that neither the supply of nor demand for gold can be controlled. "Backing" our dollars with gold would open the door to China and Russia to manipulate our currency. Between them they produce almost four times as much as we do, and would be in a great position to dump or withdraw to drive our dollar down or up.
Gold is a speculative commodity that doesn't have the advantage of a particularly valuable use, its price is hugely dependent on perceptions and market plays, its valuation chart looks like Rocky Mountain National Park in comparison to the dollar because those perceptions and plays are so volatile.
_Politicians don't control the money supply, which is crucial to the flow of global business and commerce. Instituting a specie currency would just put an irrational and arbitrary control on that supply, there's literally no connection between a country's ability to possess gold and its economic power. Russia produces around 175% of the gold that we do, and is a bit player economy bigger than Spain and smaller than Mexico. Why should an accident of geology grant them a bigger stash than the U.S. which dwarfs them in economic power? Madness.
Maybe the dollar could be backed in a useful and obviously valuable commodity...like oil, or even a "market basket" of commodities. Have you ever seen the volatility of crude, or corn, or pork bellies? And how would you preserve those commodities in a vault, with their values shooting up and down, nobody could ever project the value of the dollar more than a month or two.
JK Rowling is a billionaire through bizarre circumstance, not from unique talent. She's a so so writer who just happened to hit a cultural zeitgeist with her product. Like so many ultra wealthy she found a way to tap into the vast wealth of our economy, of the global economy and be rewarded vastly out of proportion to her contribution. If anyone deserves to be rewarded for unique ability that would be the scientists who developed the RNA Covid vaccines, but of course they just do work that benefits all humanity. JK Rowling's absence would never have been noticed, let alone missed.
