Gold backed currency doesn't have to be 1-1 with gold. You can use fractional reserve to issue more currencies. Or you issue bond to borrow. Given you keep your promise to pay debt and allow people to redeem currency using gold. People will trust you as long as you keep your promise and have enough gold reserve.
I personally think having the ability to hoard gold is good. I can decide that for myself. It's easier to understand than the voodoo economics of money printing. It's the fallback to keep accountability.
Is it necessarily a bad thing to be a net debtor? Generally when a business or country borrows money it's because they can put it to some productive use that generates a greater return than the cost of borrowing. If the US is borrowing money, it means that it's making productive use of other countries' assets and getting return from those assets that the other countries are not. This should be a good thing (for the US).
People tend to react to news about national debt like it's their credit card bill that they ran up on takeout food and flatscreen TVs. It's not really the same thing.
I remember reading Average is Over and A Fairwell to Alms just when I first started working. They convinced me that labour power was going to decline precipitously. I stared saving 60+% of everything I made and putting it into index funds. Anyone making a good salary should attempt the same. Much of white collar work is extremely amenable to automation, much more than even truck driving:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
Maybe comparative advantage will save the day, but I think it is a really good idea to start accumulating capital, even at today’s valuations.
I personally think having the ability to hoard gold is good. I can decide that for myself. It's easier to understand than the voodoo economics of money printing. It's the fallback to keep accountability.