In this chapter we have reviewed a century of the changing relationship be-
tween government and the economy. The outcome has been a kind of mixed
economy, perhaps we might better call it a political economy. Most of the
means of production continue to be privately owned. Participants in the econ-
omy, businesses and consumers especially, have a good deal of freedom in the
choices they make. But the government is somehow always present, shaping if
not controlling the millions of decisions and transactions that occur every day.
In the next chapter, we examine the principal ways in which the federal govern-
ment makes economic policy, how it performs the functions and responsibili-
ties it has acquired over a century of growth and change.

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