In many ways, the United States did not enter the 1980s on a winning streak. Although the post–World War II economic boost continued through most of the 1960s, the 1970s were a series of setbacks, course corrections, and downright embarrassments for the US economy. Ever since 1945, when most of the developed world outside the United States lay in various states of ruination, and much of the rest was in one or another stage of emerging from colonialism, Americans had enjoyed the sense of being alone at the top of the world economy. Rapid growth, and relatively fair distribution of its benefits, opened the way not only to prosperity but to a strong sense that people were on an upward-ascending escalator whose top was as yet far ahead.