ABSTRACT
To anticipate much that will be discussed at greater length in subsequent chapters, I believe that the increasing inequities in our society are creating dangerous stresses. They are partly attributable to increasing unemployment resulting from increasing globalization on the one hand, and to excessive past borrowing to pay for current consumption from future tax revenues on the other. I suspect that most objective observers of the contemporary scene would agree with the above diagnosis, so far as it goes. Unlike most commentators, however, I also foresee a decline in the rate of economic growth of the West. I also question whether increasing globalization of economic activity is either inevitable or desirable. I think it is time for an extended pause for restructuring our domestic economic arrangements.
