There are only two ways in which people may acquire something they don't have: voluntary exchange; and violence. And wherever there is voluntary exchange, some form of abstract means of exchange will appear. Sweden today is seriously considering banning cash, but not for a moneyless society, but for a society completely running on cellphone mediated payments. (I disagree, my reasons are predictable)
No, people may perform their required share of the useful work in a developed post-industrial society, and have complete social access to the wealth collectively provided by all. If every worker has this access, and all have an equal share of social ownership in the industries and services that provide all with the products we need and want, and technology is advanced enough to eliminate true scarcity in most required products and resources to produce them, then there is no reason for either violence or financially-based rationing for the purpose of private profit in dispensing these products and services on an equitable basis. Private ownership of the means of producing products and dispensing services makes sense in a pre-industrial society where genuine scarcity exists, but it's archaic in a developed post-industrial world.
It's not about money. It's that there is no way to create equality without stopping the more successful from succeeding.
It is about money, actually, because in a capitalist system, "success" is usually quantified exclusively on the basis of how much money one acquires, and this often occurs via trust funds, capital gains, and happening to be born with a specific talent at the right time for that particular talent to be financially lucrative when that person reaches adulthood, and has nothing to do necessarily with usefulness to society per se, and the fact that people who happen to work hard in a lucrative field (e.g., factory assembly, professional sports or entertainment) doesn't change the fact that far larger numbers of people work hard at least equally hard and long in industries that do not pay large amounts of money (have you ever worked in a fast food restaurant, waited tables, in a kitchen as a cook, or in a duty free shop during the summer months?).
Yes, the Olympics would be more egalitarian if runners had a target time to run to and all arrived simultaneously to the finish, but that wouldn't be "the best" performance possible. Unfortunately, that means that thousands of runners don't have any medals to show for their effort, real as that effort is.
Yet people like Vanna White make huge amounts of money compared to the average person who work in useful jobs like doctor's offices, sanitation, food distribution, and the cleaning business, or who wrack their asses in jobs that require a lot of hard work to constantly produce intellectual property like myself, and she does nothing useful whatsoever, yet she doesn't even have to exert the minimum effort required to turn the letters that light up on the board in front of her anymore! (Just when you thought such a job couldn't get easier, her generous employers found a way to make the job easier for her so she is less likely to break a fingernail while turning a letter. And to be fair to Vanna, I will confess that she does make a point to exert some effort to clap in tandem with the audience when a contestant spins the wheel.) So no, "success" is not necessarily rewarded on the basis of merit or usefulness, and how lucrative a certain profession is often has no correlation to how important it is to society. Maybe we should eliminate Vanna's job with a simple button that Pat can push to make the letter appear, and find her a job in a profession much more useful and necessary for society, like working as a secretary in a doctor's office, or working on a farm to help seed crops--which are extremely important occupations that earn far less money for those who work in them than for those "successful" people who do totally cake jobs like Vanna. In a system that was resource-based rather than money-based, there would be no purpose whatsoever for the entire banking and insurance company industries, thus freeing all the owners and employees of those industries to work in truly useful vocations where they would have full access to the social store in exchange for doing a comparatively modest share of the work.
Which is why every branch of government should have a lot less power than it has now. A powerless government is useless to lobby, no matter if you're a billionnaire, because whatever you ask it to do, it cannot do.
Yet if it has less power to regulate the economy, then the rich not only become even more powerful without the need of the state to be purchased in order to make that happen (because they essentially come to rule society without any self-imposed restraint), they also run the risk of collapsing under their own excesses (note the Enron sitch of some years ago and the banking crisis of a few years ago, both in the USA) without the state to step in and bail them out, as Bush and Obama did in each respective case. On the other hand, you will note that the three areas that the predominantly conservative-minded rich want the government to remain strong and well-funded is when it comes to the power to impose restrictions on our personal lives (e.g., civil rights legislation); the enforcement of private property rights and the general gap in this area between the wealthy few and the working majority; and when it comes to using the military to have the power to enforce its business edicts across the globe. Then again, perhaps the latter will change once companies like Blackwater become more popular and the rich can simply have a privately owned and run military, though in that case, it would have to make due without lucrative government contracts to hire mercenaries and "private security guards" and techs to help fight the wars.
The USA is the richest country in the world, the most powerful in soft terms too, and has large borders and coasts (and some overseas possessions not interested in independence). With this, there is no way it was going to have a small defense. Short of fragmentation (which I would favor for other reasons, but which is not likely in the short term), it will continue to have the largest defense budget in the world for the foreseeable future.
Mmmhmmm, which is pretty much the definition of a budding empire, because the more power it has in regards to economic matters and business interests in the world, the larger and more powerful "defense" industry it will need to defend and expand those interests across the globe in a worldwide system based on competition between nations as well as individuals.
And yet, most of the poor seem, de facto, by action, not by words, more interested in raising their quality of life than in ending exploitation.
Which one expects considering the private and/or state run sources of media and education, which go to great ends to ensure that the poor are conditioned to ideologically accept their lot in life, and develop an almost instinctive aversion to change, including beneficial changes, that they are too unaccustomed to, the same thing that delayed the American Revolution of 1776 for quite a long time, something Jefferson notably complained about in the Declaration of Independence. This is why most working class people in the USA define "change" as a president from the other of the Big Two political parties taking over from the other, or a black man or a woman in office instead of a white man, rather than a change from one system to another. This is an aspect of the working class often referred to as "learned helplessness," which is a psychologically embedded attitude that fundamental change is just not possible, so they have to set "realistic" (i.e., heavily limited) goals instead. I know many Americans who, when simply asked why they won't fight for change from a for profit medical industry to a single-payer system, even if they would favor it, will respond with something like, "Well, because as much as I would like a single-payer health care system, I know it's never gonna happen, so..."
Moreover, and most important, since the US armed forces are, de facto, the armed forces of its rich allies too (Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia, at least) - the USA is financing the defense of other countries. This is empire, but it needs mentioning of itself because that is the real reason that other rich countries have so small defense budgets. The budgets of American enemies are much better comparison points: China, Russia, Iran. Even the budgets of American allies outside the umbrella are better points of comparison: Israel, India and Pakistan.
The USA funds Israel to a great extent, because they know it needs this funding to provide a viable counterpoint to the Muslim and Arab rich nations of the Middle East. Further, these other nations find themselves beholden to, and dependent on, the USA's military for the reasons you mentioned above, and thus often find themselves having no choice but to acquiesce to the USA's bullying when it comes to changing its social policies to match that of the USA (case in point: adopting the narrative and practices of the sex abuse hysteria, and cooperating with the USA government in arrests for sex crimes that did not involve force or coercion). Obviously, these governments do not like this subservient and beholden position, but they feel they have no other choice considering the power they would go up against, and the expenses they would incur, if they attempted to bolster their military so they could be a challenge to the USA in the way China and Russia are. They often reason, in full schoolyard fashion, that it's best to be a dupe of the bully and thus be "in good" with them (e.g., joining them in bashing the unpopular kids) than attempt to challenge them and risk paying the various prices that would entail (e.g., having their lunch money taken from them, not getting a good share of the cigarette action, or maybe even getting their asses pummeled).
China and India are not doing it.
Erm, keep in mind that they are new to the status of "burgeoning world power." Give them some time to build up that juice in the global 'hood. They are already building up a strong military and getting heavily involved in major global business, including dealings with the USA on a large scale, and neither experienced the beating from the USA--and the resulting ideology against military build-up for imperialistic purposes--that Japan did when it made its own bid to become a world power between the early decades of the 20th century and the end of World War II.
All of that is a product that the way health provision is designed by law incentives every provider to raise their costs and conduct useless treatments or choose more expensive alternatives. This inevitably raises insurance premiums; and inevitably raises also the costs to government of financing some of it. There are huge barriers to entry both for doctors and for treatments and medicines, which makes absolutely no sense. And there are huge incentives to align your own way to operate as a hospital or doctor not with the patients but with the government and private insurers. It need not be that expensive; no matter who is paying.
Bottom line (pun intended, considering the OT subject we are on): this is what happens when such a wealthy nation puts profits before people and even cost-efficiency when it comes to the health care industry, which is usually the one industry that prosperous nations believe shouldn't be required to make profits but allocated mostly on the basis of simple human need. And the USA is clearly pushing for other First World nations to adopt private health care initiatives, as well as heavily pushing its learned helplessness ideology upon the people of those nations so they will hopefully resign themselves to this negative change en masse rather than standing up and consider themselves able to oppose it (note some of Sancho's recent highly defeatist and dejected posts on the subject of the USA pushing privatized health care on his own nation).
Go for her [Bianca Ryan]. Talented, but a little too old for me.
Well, can't you at least agree she has very cute facial features?
Btw, as I typed these words, I was listening to the instrumental "Summer Place" from the City of Prague Philharmonic, and I now find myself identifying that tune with you as a result. Look it up, I think you will like it!