This book consists of 120 basic factual statements about the American
economy, each illustrated by a page of four-color charts
and explained in a page of text. The colored charts, which are a distinctive feature of the book, unfortunately cannot be reproduced here. The scope of the book and the picture of the U.S.
economy that emerges from it are suggested by the following excerpts from the text. Mr. Stein is a senior fellow, and Mr. Foss is a visiting scholar, at AEI.
Total output in the United States has increased greatly from
generation to generation. Total output per capita is the best available single measure of the performance of an economy. It limits how much its population can consume, how much they can devote to investment to increase consumption in the future, and how much they can devote to defense of the country.