NOW IT CAN BE TOLD. More precisely, now it has been told in new studies of comparative economic performance. It seems that the U.S. economic model trumps the European model, and is set fair to continue to do so.

Since communism collapsed and the Japanese model of government-guided investment, exchange-rate manipulation, and the replacement of markets with ministers proved itself dysfunctional, the world has had on offer only two versions of how to create national wealth: the European Union and the United States.