天上掉餡餅

1、A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.　

一段長時間并且不費力而成功的歷史可能成為一種可怕的不利因素，但若處理得當，這種不利因素也有可能轉化為一種積極的推動力。二戰結束后，美國恰好進入了這樣的一個輝煌時期，當時，它擁有比任何競爭者大8倍的市場，這使其工業經濟具有前所未有的規模經濟。美國的科學家是世上最優秀的，它的工人是最富于技術的。美國的國富民強是那些經濟遭到戰爭破壞的歐亞諸國做夢也無法達不到的。

2、It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

隨著其他國家日益強盛，美國的這一優勢地位逐漸下降是不可避免的。從優勢地位上退出的痛苦也同樣是不可避免的。到了80年代中期，面對其日益衰退的工業競爭力，美國人感到不知所措。面對國外競爭，一些大型的美國工業，如消費電子產業，已經萎縮或漸漸消失。到1987年，美國只剩下Zenith這一家電視生產商。（現在一家也沒有了：Zenith于當年7月被韓國LG電器公司收購。）外國制造的汽車和紡織品正在大舉進入國內市場。美國的機床工業也即將滅亡。人們曾一度感覺下一個在海外品牌面前全軍覆沒的似乎該輪到美國的半導體制造業了，而在新計算機時代有著核心作用的半導體正是美國人發明的。

3、All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

所有這一切導致了信任危機。美國不再視繁榮為理所當然之事。他們開始相信自己的商業經營方式不靈了，也相信不久他們的收入也會因此而下降。80年代中期，人們對美國工業衰退的成因作了一次又一次的探尋。在美國人那些有時聳人聽聞的發現中充滿著對其他國家日益增長的經濟競爭的警告之詞。

4、How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanaugh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."

情況的變化真快！1995年，當日本還在奮力拼搏的時候，美國卻可以對5年的穩固發展作一回顧了。沒幾個美國人將這一巨變單純歸因于美元貶值或商業周期循環這些顯而易見的原因。到如今，對自身的懷疑已被盲目樂觀所取代。“美國的工業已經改變了結構，消除了滯脹，學會了明智”，這是哈佛大學肯尼迪管理學院行政院長理查德•卡佛納的看法。華盛頓特區的智囊團——卡托研究院的史蒂芬•莫爾說：“看到我們的企業正在提高自身的生產率，作為一個美國人，我感到自豪。”哈佛商學院的威廉•薩爾曼相信人們將會把這一時期視為“美國企業管理的黃金時代”。

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