What other currency is the rest of the world going to switch over to? Euros? Yuan? Yen? The USD is still far and away the safest place for other nations' currency reserves.
I agree that our national debt is getting too large and we need to reduce our deficit to avoid getting ourselves into hot water down the road, but it's hardly the impending apocalypse you're trying to portray it as. As for your 35 year argument, you're trying to create a more uncertain image for the USD than is realistic. It's not like there was some fundamental shift in the 70's where people were marching down to the bank to get their gold every week and suddenly couldn't because of this massive paradigm shift. The government simply realized that keeping large reserves of gold was unnecessary -- the training wheels could be taken off and the bike would keep rolling along just fine. Which it has, and will continue to do. Better, in fact, because now without the training wheels you can do maneuvers you couldn't do (like avoid a full blown economic depression).
Well your response was civil, thank you =)
Regarding the 35 year argument, there WAS a fundamental shift in the 70's. That shift happened August 15, 1971 when the "gold window" was eliminated - the gold window allowed foreign nations to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed rate ($35/ounce). American citizens were not allowed to exchange in this way, but nations could. In other words, the US dollar was still on some semblance of a gold standard until that day.
At the beginning of 1971, a US dollar was essentially still "as good as gold," at least on an international level. After the gold window was closed, the US became pure fiat. This was even more influential because many other countries tied their currencies to the dollar, so it effectively thrust much of the world into fiat. You wouldn't call this a "fundamental shift?" I'm guessing you never learned this in school... I sure didn't. Not surprisingly, after the gold standard was completely destroyed the value of the dollar plummeted and within three years it took $195 to buy an ounce of gold instead of $35.
This was the equivalent of a default on debt obligations. If you were a foreign nation, and held dollars, this dealt you a crushing blow. Instead of your dollar pile representing a set weight of gold, it now represented... nothing. Or more accurately, it represented "faith" in the US Government. The US Gov defaulted only a few decades ago... also didn't learn that in school, right? =)
So perhaps you consider gold "training wheels," and you say a mature currency doesn't need them. Well, the dollar has lost 80% of its purchasing power in these few decades since. It will lose much more than that in the next decade or two.
Voltaire famously said, "paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero." I think you may find yourself understanding why that is the case over the next several years.