The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust

“ON PRESENT policies and performance, the United States is condemned to slower growth than the other main industrial countries for the foreseeable future.” So declared the Competitiveness Policy Council, a committee advising America’s president and Congress, in 1992, a time when America was gripped by concerns that its economy was declining and losing ground to Japan and Europe. The opposite turned out to be true. Japan entered a long period of stagnation, Europe’s growth fizzled and America experienced a mini-boom, fuelled by the rise of the internet.