Where the value of the dollar comes from

Response to a socialist view of where money comes from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNu5ppFZbHo

This video mentions the gold standard, but only notes the effect they like. Namely that government can now print endless amounts of money to spend on anything they want. The downside of this is that savers pay the price for the lenders (including government).

So really this is a form of taxes, with the difference being that most people don't realize what's going on. And it's mostly a tax on the working class, not the rich. The rich do know this is going on an put their savings into real estate and other assets that don't lose value. Working class pension funds lose value and their rent goes up.

What gave the dollar value in the past is that it could be traded for a specific amount of gold. Dropping the gold standard means now something else is needed to give the dollar value: the petrodollar. The US has a deal with many oil producing countries that they always demand dollars for their oil. This creates a demand for dollars in the market. So while the dollar has lost massive amounts of value, being worth ~6.5 times less in 2018 than in 1971: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1970-dollars-in-2018?amount=100, that drop in value would have been much greater without the petrodollar. If you wonder why oil producing countries keep this system going, consider recent US military activities.

It's interesting that socialists who claim to advocate for the working class are in favor of policies that damage the working class. The reason seeming to be that they want endless government spending on government programs. Even though those programs never work, as exemplified by the war on poverty which only had the effect of stabilizing levels of poverty that had previously been in decline:
https://fee.org/media/4182/0712lingle.pdf