Consider an extraordinary world in which:
-- Raw-material costs have long ceased to have much effect on industry.
-- The global food supply is outstripping the increase in the number of hungry people, pointing to an era in which producers will savagely compete for the last remaining market, the Soviet Union.
-- A steady boom in manufacturing leads to, and in fact requires, an equally steady decline in blue-collar jobs.
-- A new "symbol" economy of financial flows outweighs the "real" world economy of traded goods and services by a ratio of more than 35 to l.
Such a place already...