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A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handling, it may become a driving force. When __1
the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any other competitor, given its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its __2
scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies that the war had destroyed. __3
It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans found __4
themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competition. Some __5
huge American industries, such as consumer electronic, had shrunk __6
or vanished in the face of foreign competition. Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market and America’s machine-tool industry was on the rope. For a while it looked as __7
though the making of semiconductors, which America had sat at the __8
heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped talking prosperity for grant. They began to believe that their way of doing __9
business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980 brought one inquiry after __10
another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about growing competition from overseas.
