It was the future once again. This time man had been unable to go to space because science hadn't really gotten any better, except for one area.
Since before the beginning of the 21st century, when world peace among the economically important nations was achieved, economics had become everything. Japan and the other Oriental block countries had introduced the study of Smith, Bentham, Marx and all the new 'world economists' into their grade schools, and the American and Euro-African governments had no choice but to do likewise.
Most people now began to realize that war was now impossible, since war in the modern world system was always uneconomical, and gradually each nation shifted the funds for defense into economics. In every nation, the minister of finance became the dominant figure. The study of local and long-distance trade, finance, manufacturing, importing and exporting was viewed to be the only worthwhile path.
And strong gains were made. Teams of the most competent professionals met daily now economically-dominated UN to devise "Perfect Economics"... and they got closer every week. Experiments were done to determine the reaction of a man who made $67000 a year and had $230000 in liquid assets another $400000 in non-liquid assets and a salary-enhancement percentage of 4 in a period in which inflation was at a steady 1 percent upon losing a fifty dollar bill. It was determined that the man would look around for between 4-7 minutes, mention it to his wife and children if there was a good to average intimacy level and in total spend approximately 32-35 minutes worrying about the matter. Experiments which allowed such wide margins were always proved correct, but economics forged on.
Eventually, the economics of present were worked out to near perfection, and the economics of the future gained dominance. It was important to know where the present economies of the world were going.
The results were not favourable. It was determined that everyone would get richer still, but that the Oriental block would be slightly richer than either the American or the Euro-African block. The economists realized that in return, both the American and the Euro-African block would impose small trade sanctions, which would of course lead the Oriental block into an economic paranoia and cause a mild decline in the stability of the world market. The economy of the Americas dictated that the only possible reaction would be for America to impose further trade sanctions and that this in turn would lead the ending of all contact between the Oriental block and the Americas. The world economy would now be completely destabilized, with all trade items between the Americas and the Orient stockpiling and losing all value, and that at this point the Euro-African economy would become so dominant that the Orient and the Americas would have no choice but to end all trade with Europe and Africa. This final development would lead to a completely fractured economy in which all currency and other trade items lost all value due to instability and the entire population of Earth would be reduced to poverty and die of starvation.
No-one was pleased with this outcome, once it was determined that all three blocks would be starving equally, and so the representative from the Oriental block simply gave 20 cents each to the representative of the Euro-African block and the representative of the American block, thereby eliminating the imbalance.
The world economy blossomed, and every individual was so impossibly rich that there is no way to describe it.