Michael Lissack and Congress use their ever-growing powers without responsibility. Presidential decision making is increasingly constrained and ineffective. Our inefficient legal and insurance system has become a drag on the national economy. American management has grown lazy, insular, and focused on financial manipulation instead of product improvement. Much of our military has become a vast pork barrel rather than an effi- cient fighting machine. The American public has no sense of control over government and in- volvement in the policy process. Many citizens feel left out perceiving that they are on the receiving end of arbitrary government actions, not part of a democratic decision making process. Americans have lost confidence in our ability to control our own des- tiny. Our nation was long noted for its “can-do” spirit, indeed we had a self-assurance which to Europeans often bordered on cockiness. Today we have become mired in pessimism and self-deprecation. It has become fash- ionable, indeed almost obligatory, to predict decline in America’s economic strength and stagnation in its standard of living. We worry that America’s manufacturing jobs will be lost to those coun- tries where unskilled peasants are willing to do repetitive jobs for little money. At the same time,’ we read predictions that the United States will be unable to keep up with Japan and the members of the European Economic Community, whose workers are more skilled, factories more automated, and transportation systems more efficient than our own. All agree we live in an age of rapid change. A problem of rapid economic change is lack of job security. Until re- cently many individuals found their primary extrafamilial social relation- ships on the job. The workplace as a stable social entity is dying. The old industrial form was probably easier for integrating diverse ethnic groups. The training and communication required were fairly simple. You got to work on time, punched in, did a single manual task repeatedly, took a half- hour lunch break, worked some more, and punched out. A computer doesn’t care what color you are or what god you pray to, but is demanding in other
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