I showed in Part One that part of the explanation for this difference might be that the United States and Britain came to feel that they were being overtaken by other countries in the 1970s. This sense that other countries were catching up contributed to the rise of Thatcherism and Reaganism. To be sure, the catch-up that occurred between 1950 and 1980 was largely a mechanical consequence of the shocks endured by continental Europe and Japan between 1914 and 1945. The people of Britain and the United States nevertheless found it hard to accept: for countries as well as individuals, the wealth
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