    16

    the l

    enter the ranks of the world's most inefficient.  Britain would go from the

    indisputable ruler of world affairs to a second-rate power.

    In military terms, the Germans would lose two world wars.  Yet

    Germany would become in 1987 the greatest exporting nation on the

    globe--overtaking even the Japanese.  Economically, the Germans would

    win.24

    Today America seems to be following the path that led the British to

    their downfall.  In 1945, the United States produced 40% of the world's

    goods.  By the mid '80s our share was half of that.  Until the early '70s, we

    were the biggest exporter in the world.  Today, we are the biggest importer.

    Our Federal deficits are soaring.   And the amount of money we've borrowed

    from the citizens of foreign countries is so awesome25 that we are now the

    biggest debtors since the prehistoric invention of the loan.26

    America's educational system has become one of the least effective in

    the industrial world.  The average Taiwanese first grader spends over eight

    hours a week doing homework.  The average American: an hour and

    nineteen minutes.27   And the American companies that should be making

    consumer products the whole world wants to buy--Westinghouse, Raytheon

    and General Electric--have dramatically reduced their commitment to the

    manufacture of consumer goods.  Instead, they dedicated themselves in the

    '70s and '80s to living off government welfare, turning out overpriced

    defense items that guaranteed a fat profit.

    When hot new innovations come out of American labs, no American

    company scoops them up and turns them into the gadgets of tomorrow.  Bell

    Labs created the transistor in the '40s.  But the people who made a fortune in

    the '60s and '70s selling us transistorized television sets and radios were

    Japanese.  RCA and Ampex developed the videocassette recorder.  But the

    folks who raked in over six billion dollars a year selling VCRs to the world

    were, once again, the Japanese.28  And these sorry experiences did not teach

    us any lessons.  American scientists were in the forefront of basic research on

    superconductors--the hot new technology of the '90s.  But in 1988, most

      owest.  The British factories, once the world's most productive, would

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