ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that the very success of US global hegemony has imposed costs on the American national economy, produced local economic problems, and generated the national mood of pessimism. New low-wage service jobs do not compensate adequately for the lost manufacturing jobs and lower incomes in manufacturing brought about by the American economy's increased involvement in world trade. The new world economy has no natural sympathies, even in the homeland of those who did the most to create it. Between 1960 and 1970, new American corporate investments abroad expanded from 21 percent to 40 percent of total investments. At the root of the American rise to hegemony and the creation of the world economy as we know it today lay two features of the US historical experience. The US economy reigned supreme in a world not yet recovered from the mass destruction of war.
