ABSTRACT
The incredible strength of the US economic organization in the first half of the twentieth century was premised in large measure upon a close fit between massproduction industrial organization and government policy. The vitality of the nation’s mass-production system was bolstered by a broader political economy that supported mass production – everything from roads, railways and ports to the land-grant post-secondary education system that grew up alongside and in support of mass-production industry. But, we suggest that government economic policy (regional economic development policy included), which once worked so well, may be thought of as being increasingly out of sync with the demands of the emerging high-performance model of economic organization. One way to think about this policy environment is as a large and increasingly unwieldy layer-cake of policies and programs that built up over time to meet the needs and requirements of a bygone industrial epoch. This mass-production policy system is not only costly and inefficient: it comprises a considerable obstacle to the emergence of the new economy.
