In The Next Economy, I wrote that big business had
  “peaked” in the United States and was in fact beginning to
  break up into smaller components. • That was in 1983.
  Before long the Wall Street megamergers and acquisitions
  began to dominate the news. But I don’t believe I was
  wrong in my prediction. Those Wall Street deals are the
  symptoms of an old way of doing business. It is precisely
  because Fortune 500 firms cannot find ways to grow that
  they are beginning to eat their young. For example, from
  1978 to 1986, General Motors grew in sales from $63 billion
  to $102 billion, but the company’s share of the domestic car
  market fell from 48 percent to 39 percent. Price increases,
  inflation, and acquisitions were the source of GM’s
  “growth.”
   The net result of the zealous trading, wheeling, and
  dealing that is front-page news is that the Fortune 500 firms
  have lost between 4 and 6 million permanent jobs since
  1970. One million jobs were lost in 1980 alone, when small
  businesses added 2 million jobs. In real terms, adjusted for
  
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