OUR WORLD HAS CHANGED, OUR GOVERNMENT HASN'T T he last forty years have seen dramatic paradigm shifts throughout American society. All our traditional institutions-the law, religion, and even the state-have changed in startling ways almost over- night. We are in the process of evolving from a raw material -intensive and capital-intensive economy to a knowledge-intensive economy. Yet a large part of tomorrow's labor force is not learning to read, write, calculate, and spell in school. The young workers most in need of on-the job training aren't seeking out that training. With all jobs that pay a living wage increasingly becoming skilled jobs, this means that the United States will soon have millions of adults who cannot be employed at acceptable family wages. America is in trouble economically, then, not because our economy is fail- ing to grow; not because the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Western Europeans are beating us in world competition; and not because American overall per worker productivity no longer is the highest in the world. Rather, we are in trouble because a large and growing part of our population is suf- fering from severe family-related pathologies that render them incapable of availing themselves of the opportunities that the American economy offers. Anyone who simply looks around at crumbling U.S. cities, with their
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