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THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AT THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1. The United States entered the 21st century with an economy that was bigger, and by many measures more successful, than ever. Not only had it endured two world wars and a global depression in the first half of the 20th century, but it had surmounted challenges ranging from a 40-year Cold War with the Soviet Union to extended bouts of sharp inflation, high unemployment, and enormous government budget deficits in the second half of the century. The nation finally enjoyed a period of economic calm in the 1990s: prices were stable, unemployment dropped to its lowest level in almost 30 years, the government posted a budget surplus, and the stock market experienced an unprecedented boom. In 1998, America’s gross domestic product exceeded $8.5 trillion.
2. Though the United States held less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it accounted for more than 25 percent of the world’s economic output. Japan, the world’s second largest economy, produced about half as much. And while Japan and many of the world’s other economies grappled with slow growth and other problems in the 1990s, the American economy recorded the longest uninterrupted period of expansion in its history.
3. As in earlier periods, however, the United States had been undergoing profound economic change at the beginning of the 21st century. A wave of technological innovations in computing, telecommunications, and the biological sciences were profoundly affecting how Americans work and play.
4. The United States remains a “market economy.” Americans continue to believe that an economy generally operates best when decisions about what to produce and what prices to charge for goods are made through the give-and-take of millions of independent buyers and sellers, not by government or by powerful private interests. In a free market system, Americans believe, prices are most likely to reflect the true value of things, and thus can best guide the economy to produce what is most needed.
‘Continuity and Change’ http://usinfo.state.gov
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America is the world’s largest economy.
