I still remember all the doomsday predictions about being outclassed by the Japanese, and how we had to follow their model, and so forth. It all turned out to be, as you put it, a "snapshot...frozen in time", and all of the hype proved groundless, the result of easy loans and crony capitalism, which eventually went bust. I have been much more skeptical of long term projections since then.
If, by the way, China manages to attain parity with us in GNP, it will still mean that per capita income is a fraction of ours, that their standard of living will be much below that of Western Europe, much less the United States, and that the United States will remain the most attractive market and the world economic leader......... |
