It is my understanding that the USA's contribution to the UN is WAY in arrears. I wonder what impact a 5% reduction in military spending would have on the nations budget balance. Cut back on new warships, aircraft, or weapons.

I disagree. A time will come when money, as we currently have it, will be worthless.

Then, for a short while, it will be survival of the food producers. That will become the survival of the physically ruthless, the people who are happy to kill and beat others into submission.

Yup. I think it was Karl Marx who said that the capitalist system, inherently included the mechanism for it's own destruction. It IS a pyramid scheme, and WILL fail. That regression is depicted in "Cloud Atlas"... the book, not the movie!

"manage the workforce"? I think control, or enslave would be more appropriate. In the West, and becoming so in the rest of the world, the vast majority of us are slaves to debt, while the supposedly rich, borrow at low rates while lending at high rates. They, like the banks, have lent far more than they actually have.

I often wonder...There is more money owed, than actually exists.even on paper (or computer). What is the proportion? If the bottom fell out of the property market, worldwide, many of the supposedly mega rich would be broke, banks would fail, and everything that the capitalist world values would disappear.