Claig, have you heard of Webster Tarple, I know you are aware of malthus. You see I have listened and read Tarple, I am aware of the neo-malthusians who are a bunch of academics who claim that humanity is a blot on the world and that population will reach an unsustainable level, resources will run scarce, modern farming methods are harming bio-diversity etc,...
Where to start with this 
Companies like Monsanto wage war upon other nations, this is done by undermining their governments using CIA and various economic tactics, with the full backing of the U.S government. Monsanto is a huge corporation involved in petro chemicals, fertilizers, GM crops and modern farming methods. Monsanto along with others have stripped the U.S, depleted soil and now bees are shipped in lorries all over the US because these chemicals are harming bio-diversity. As with oil the U.S government acts as broker, facilitator that will allow the imperialist aspirations of these corporations to exploit other countries. They do this through foreign policy, trade policies, lending, IMF, FED WTO etc and air bases all over the globe that threaten the security of other nations, whilst bankrupting the American State itself.
Tarple claims that Obamas science Tzar is a neo-malthusian who follows Paul Ehrlich's ideas. Can you see that in this case there is a contradiction btw these two camps?
Back in the 1940s a few academic economists who subscribed to the idea of liberal economic free market capitalism managed to get funding from wealthy backers to set up a think tank. Mount peralin society. The reason that the wealthy elite coughed up the dollars is because the "thinkers" generate ideas that fit with the agenda of the capitalist class. It isn't a case of the elite being thinkers. The elite are the capitalist class who fund the thinkers to think what is commercially desirable. In this case, the thinkers were paid to spread the neo-liberal orthodoxy throughout the universities. Look up the chicago school. Investigate neo-liberal theory and Margeret Thatcher's advisor Keith Joseph
"Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state. Keynesian economics, they believed, was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers" wiki
Although capitalists work as a class to further their own interests as a group there remains a great deal of competition over ideas and competition to gain the upper hand commercially. Not all "thinkers" think in terms of ideas and theory that will further the commercial interests of the corporate capitalist class. neo-malthusians have the backing of some very wealthy people?????? the nexus btw corporate capital and finance capital isn't as clear cut as one might think. The further up the ladder one looks it may come down to some individual finance capitalists who lets face it will play off one idea against another, one business against another and so on. In doing so they get very rich. They lend to both sides in a war as the ultimate example of this.
Sorry ttosca
Workfare is a bastard, slave invention of the U.S, another import like foodbanks that we could do without.