ABSTRACT
Technology plays a pivotal role in economic growth. It offsets the deadening impact of diminishing returns and forestalls the onset of the stationary state that had so vexed Ricardian economists in the early years of the industrial epoch. The fact that organization and ideology cumulate in the sequential process of industrial modernization may not be as clear as in the case of technology, for which there are visible structures and commodities that remind us of the way it has grown. The Industrial Revolution was triggered by a series of mechanical inventions that broke production bottlenecks in complementary industries whose markets benefited from both high income and price elasticity of demand. The United States during the years since World War II is considered. At mid-century, few societies were better organized for involving its citizens in the economic and political processes affecting their lives.
