You figure silver is the index of all things? Why, pray tell, except for some sort of magical thinking? It was worth more in 1980 then it is now--are we on the right track?
Personally I go for days at a time without touching any silver at all. On the other hand, the medications that are currently keeping me alive didn't exist, at any weight of silver, gold, or unobtanium, in the fifties and sixties.I had a smallpox shot back in those halcyon days of economic splendor, a shot that my children didn't need.
If I need to examine the state of a nation, the price of some particular mineral enshrined solely by tradition wouldn't be the first place I'd look, any more than I'd glom onto the relative worth of cowrie shells or beanie babies. Do you really believe that people command 1/26 of the spending power their parents did, just because the price of silver has changed by that much? Do you claim that Americans are 26 times hungrier, colder, and sicker than they were in 1950, or are the Hunt brothers a lot wealthier for their manipulations of the price of a sometimes-useful metal (although, with film gone from cameras, I suspect you'll be able to watch the dollar grow stronger, or at least silver get cheaper.)