es driving these changes? End of Communism - within the past 20 years 33% of human life on this planet, 1.9 billion people have joined the capitalist world - this many people can not enter capitalism without a significant change. Moving from natural resource-based industries to manmade brainpower industries - Countries with the focus on education for the masses and research and development will lead the brainpower industries in design and those that can be the "low cost producers will inherit the earth." Aging of the world population - there will be a voting majority over the age of 65 in every industrialized country by 2025 - in the United States the elderly hold a majority of the economic wealth. Existence of genuinely global economy - companies can design in one country, have it manufactured in another country and then have it shipped directly to the distributors on the other side of the globe, as a result companies face new but distant competitors. No dominant economic, political or military power - the United States went from having 75 percent of the world's industrial population to 23 to 24 percent. Europe has 50 percent more people than the United States but has not created any new jobs in the past 22 years while the United States created 38 million net new jobs. The Soviet Union has dissolved leaving the United States and China as the major military powers.Lester Thurow calls these forces "economic plates" in reference to the huge tectonic plates that float on earth's molten core as much like the real tectonic plates, we know the forces creating the change but are unable to predict the outcome. As further evidence of the economic revolution, he adds that if you asked any industrialized country in the world to list seven industries that they would like to have some strong players in your country, everybody would give the same list: microelectronics, biotechnology, the new materials-science industries, telecommunications, civil...
