Reich asserts that there are no longer national economies as we have come to understand them. In the future, all that will be left unless we change our course is a group of people trying to cope with the forces of the global economy. The only aspect of the national economy that is relatively immobile is the US workforce.
Profitability is no longer a guarantee of an increased standard of living for the majority.
The nation-state idea was novel before the 18th Century. Monarchs, philosophers and others did not see a nation as at all responsible for or connected to the population's economic well-being. Patriotism was equated with devotion to the monarch. In England's view, the American colonies existed to enrich the sovereign. The shift from mercantilism to economic nationalism paralleled the political shift to democracy.