The great economic contests have been won. Communism vanished before it was even vanquished. The Japanese competitive threat is now a sorry heap of bad debt. European welfare states heave under double-digit unemployment. And here in the land of plenty we've never had it so good.
American capitalism is the envy of the world.
But look more closely and the easy explanation falls short. Most Americans don't have it so good. They have jobs, but most wages and benefits are stuck or continue to drop. Wealth has exploded at the top, but the wages of people in the bottom half are lower today in terms of purchasing power than they were in 1989, before the last recession. This is in sharp contrast to every previous recovery in the postwar period.