I didn't say that I believed it

I just said that I read it in National Geographic. The reason I didn't check it out on Wiki was that I don't care about it that much. Anyway, how do you know that Wiki knows any more about it than National Geographic? They are both reputable sources, although Wiki is a secondary source. The primary source in this case is that Pew guy, but how do we know that he's telling the truth? National Geographic has been around for more than a hundred years, long before people started taking all those polls. They do screw up once in a while, but then they always print a retraction after somebody calls their attention to it. So why don't you write them a letter calling their attention to this alleged error? Be that as it may, I still think you would have a tough time ruling the world with just science and logic. Come to think of it, I could be wrong about that. Since it's never been tried before, I can't say for certain that it wouldn't work. Go for it!

You said something awhile back about wanting to rule the world with me, and I declined the honor. Okay, maybe you just meant you wanted us to save the world. I could go along with that because we could just do it once and be done with it, we wouldn't have to spend the rest of our lives going to all those boring meetings. The thing is, though, how do we know that the world even wants to be saved? It's hard enough saving somebody who wants to be saved, much less somebody who doesn't. Maybe somebody should take a poll about that.

I think that to say "the money never existed" is a bit of a stretch. The Federal Reserve Board creates new money by buying up government debt from private dealers and assigning credit to the dealer's bank when they cash the check. The bank is allowed to loan out nine times that amount, which creates even  more money. When the Fed wants to cool down the economy, they take money out of circulation by selling some of the bonds that they previously bought. When the Great Depression started, the Fed was supposed to put more money into circulation, but they reduced the money supply instead. I don't know what they were thinking at the time, but these were educated men who should have known better, which leads me to believe that they did it on purpose. And you wonder why a guy gets paranoid?

When I pay a nickel more for that burger, the money doesn't go directly to the guy who cooked it. The money goes to the corporation that employs him, say McDonald's. They use that nickel to make up for the government mandated raise that they just gave to their cooks, and McDonald's profit margin remains the same. Now, if that raise had never been  mandated, the underpaid cooks would have still been eligible for government assistance like Medicaid and food stamps. If the government assistance had never been there, many of those cooks could not have afforded to work at McDonalds in the first place. If they had to drive any distance at all and maintain a reliable vehicle, or if they had to pay somebody to watch their kids, or if they were already on some kind of government assistance for which working would make them ineligible, they might actually lose money going to work for minimum wage. If McDonalds could not find enough qualified people who were willing and able to work for them, they would have to pay their help more or find some other way to get their burgers cooked. In a manner of speaking, then, the government assistance that goes to people working full time for minimum wage is as much a subsidy for the employers as it is for the employees.

I don't think that government is any more corrupt than private corporations, although they may be less efficient. The big corporations that do become inefficient usually end up getting bailed out by the government, so they don't count. The advantage of dealing with a corporation is that you have more options than dealing with the government. You can take your business elsewhere or even decide not to buy the product at all. Okay, you can't do without some things like beer and cigarettes, but you can make your own or reduce your consumption.  I didn't say it would be easy, I just said it was possible.