9Structural Changes in the World Economy and Society as They Affect American Business1977

My topic is “Structural Changes in the World Economy,” and I perhaps best begin by saying that contrary to what most of us believe, the present kind of transition period is an old and very familiar story. Every 50 years or so, since something you might call a modern economy first emerged around 1700, there has been a “go-go decade” in which there seemed to be no limit to growth: 1720, 1770, the 1830s, and the 1870s.

One began in the early 1900s, which was aborted in Europe by World War I and in this country it continued to 1929. And now it occurred again in the 1960s and the early 1970s. And these rather giddy periods are always followed by a pretty massive ...

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