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FRAGILE GLOBAL ECONOMY CAPITALISM is the most successful wealth-
creating economic system that the world has ever known; no other
system, as the distinguished economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed
out, has benefited "the common people" as much. Capitalism, he
observed, creates wealth through advancing continuously to ever
higher levels of productivity and technological sophistication;
this process requires that the "old" be destroyed before the
"new" can take over. Technological progress, the ultimate
driving force of capitalism, requires the continuous discarding
of obsolete factories, economic sectors, and even human skills.
The system rewards the adaptable and the efficient; it punishes
the redundant and the less productive. This "process of creative
destruction," to use Schumpeter's term, produces many winners
but also many losers, at least in the short term, and poses a
serious threat to traditional social values, beliefs, and
institutions. Moreove