ABSTRACT
Since about 1975, it has come to be widely appreciated in the Atlantic world that a limit to social outlays has been reached or exceeded and that the central problems of our societies lie elsewhere. Without solving those problems, it is becoming apparent that the social and physical infrastructures of the advanced industrial countries will erode. Rapid growth and low unemployment are fundamental to maintaining the viability of Social Security, eliminating the Federal deficit, rebuilding the nation’s physical plant and bringing black unemployment down sharply from its present corrosive level of about 15 percent. Given the apparent temper of national politics and political rhetoric, it may appear utopian to hold up a vision of national consensus and of cooperation among business, labor, government and major political parties. The necessary political transition has begun at the state and local levels where the future shape of national politics is often foreshadowed in the United States.
