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Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East
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Sales rank 584,966
Customers rating (based on 47 reviews)
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From one of our shrewdest economic trend-spotters, a wake-up call that prosperity is about to shift from the West to the East, and what we can do before it's too late By the beginning of this century it was already commonplace to speak of the U.S. as a "hyperpower," to talk of its military, political, and economic clout as unprecedented in world history, and to assume that American dominance would continue at least throughout our lifetimes. It is conventional wisdom that America will have no serious rivals for at least a generation. But the American position is far more fragile and ephemeral than much of the world believes. Clyde Prestowitz shows the powerful yet barely visible trends that are threatening to end the six-hundred-year run of Western domination of the world. The trends include America's increasingly unsustainable trade deficits; the equally unsustainable (and dangerous) buildup of massive dollar reserves in places like Japan and China; the end of America's position as the world's premier center for invention and technological innovation; the sudden entrance of 2.5 billion people in India and China into the world's skilled job market; the role of the World Wide Web in permitting many formerly localized jobs to be done anywhere in the world; and the demographic meltdown of Europe, Japan, Russia, and, in later decades, even China. Three Billion New Capitalists is a clear-eyed and profoundly unsettling look at America's and the world's economic future, from an author with a history of predicting the important trends long before they become apparent to others.
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| Publisher | Basic Books | | Release date | 05/2005 | | Availability | Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your credit card will not be charged until we ship the item. | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $26.95 | | Our price | $20.48 (you save 24.01%) | | Used price | from $0.01 |
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 A Comprehensive Analysis of the Many Factors Currently Influencing the Global Economy
Going back to the 1400's and taking us through to modern times, Clyde Prestowitz provides the reader with a clear, comprehensive and very accurate analysis of the many factors currently influencing the global economy. If you read this extremely interesting book and, also, Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat," you'll then have a much better knowledge of where we are today as a society, as understood from both an economic and technological perspective.
Essential Reading for All Americans
This is one of those books that every American should be obliged to read. It is a wonderfully written history, status report and blueprint of the global struggle for economic supremacy. And the news flash is; we ain't winning it. True, the author has made dire forecasts before that haven't panned out, but that doesn't make his message any less relevant. America's spendthrift ways and delusions of God anointed supremacy, coupled with China's fierce determination to play catch up with its previous Western oppressors, has led us to the current sorry state we're in. While GOP conservatives refuse to endorse government sponsored industrial policies, the rest of the world is taking advantage of our ideologicly blind devotion to outdated laissez faire capitalism to open up a can of economic whup-butt on us. Ironically, while Lou Dobbs' furrowed brow waxes anxiety over illegals and lost jobs, those very same immigrants are losing their jobs in Mexico to cheaper Chinese labor. Politicians who ignore this message are guilty of treason, plain and simple.
 Largely garbage, yet pretinent enough for the average man
My problems with this book largely stem from its oversimplification of very complex issues, resulting in a distorted image of what the current state of global political economy is, and what the future condition will be. The obfuscating simplicity of the book is evidenced by Prestowitz's using of general terms and phrases like, "free trade" and "free trade is good for America", etc. The phenomenon Prestowitz is discussing involves numerous actors, governments, institutions, classes, etc., so by using phrases like the ones above, he simultaneously fails to explain the phenomenon accurately and also misinforms the reader by providing him an incredibly shallow understanding of the subject.
He unquestioningly regards the success of American firms in foreign markets to be good for "America", without really explaining what "America" signifies. Such a position doesn't really say or mean anything beyond the jingoism to which it alludes. The dictates of common sense point us to the obvious flaw of such generalizations; GM auto workers are not impacted in the same way as GM stock holders are when the firm moves its factories to foreign countries, yet certainly both parties fall under Prestowitz's "America". In fact, he discusses the issue of unemployment in manufacturing and service industries as American firms move to foreign locales, but even then fails to recognize that a institutional, fragmented examination of each country is necessary if he wants his contentions to adhere to some degree of veracity.
What's of importance here is an understanding of what free trade practices between the United States and China results in. By allowing American companies to manufacture and sell their products and services within China's borders and simultaneously opening the U.S. border to Chinese firms, the discernable effect is that of the movement of wealth within each society to flow towards the agents responsible for negotiating these policies. The adverse effects are borne mostly by the mass of low-level employees and workers of these corporations. Within the United States, adversity manifests itself as structural unemployment and the deterioration of wages and working standards. Adverse effects for the Chinese worker are much worse, as tens of millions of workers are driven out from inefficient factories and deprived of their subsistence, or as potentially hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers who become driven off the land as a result of pressure from U.S. agribusiness and both domestic and foreign firms seeking cheap Chinese labor.
At any rate, Prestowitz doesn't really concern himself with any of this. An examination of any macroeconomic phenomenon or time period should involve a discussion of what implications the economic policies have been upon the population. Chinese laborers and peasant farmers far outnumber the political and economic arbiters of global financial and industrial policy. Prestowitz is correct in discussing the roles of the elite, due to the largely subservient role Chinese labor plays. However, this facet of China's capital-labor relationship demonstrates that this global economic trend is overwhelmingly characterized by undemocratic, coercive, and exploitive practices. Prestowitz does mention the difficulties faced by working population in United States, even drawing some very accurate conclusions about what future scenarios could be. His treatment of these conclusions are rather callous however, as he writes off unemployment created by migrating firms as momentary; he is prepared to assume that unemployed workers can make smooth transitions from one industry to another by simply re-skilling themselves in whatever industry is hiring, a highly unlikely scenario. Deteriorating labor standards, increasing workloads, etc. are hardly mentioned at all and are generally regarded as unimportant.
Also unlike China, the result of opening borders to trade for India has meant an increase in the service sector, not in manufacturing. This means the establishment of quite low-tech services like call centers to services like medical advice provided by Indian doctors, to cutting edge services like computer and semiconductor research facilities established by companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Texas Instruments. The movement of jobs and industries such as these are the ones most discussed by Prestowitz. India has the rare advantage of having a substantial portion of its population being English speaking and relatively educated. Prestowitz correctly points out that this has much to do with active government intervention in India's educational sphere, such as the establishment and funding of the very prestigious numerous IITs. Because of the white-collar nature of these types of jobs, labor conditions facing Indian workers are much less severe than they are for workers in China. They are not expelled from the rural provinces and coerced to work; many of the workers now employed in these new industries have come from the Indian middle class itself. This is a combination of a number of other things as well. Because of a very slow and hesitant path towards opening up markets, India has managed to protect many of its infant industries. A primary reason India has opened up in the first place was because it has an overabundance of highly skilled workers, but a lack of both financial and physical capital, and thus was willing to allow an opening up of certain sectors. India has seen a much more egalitarian growth than has China. It has seen an improvement in conditions, especially for the middle class, which itself has grown and benefited somewhat from the last decade or so.
Prestowitz calls for government intervention in the economy, specifically in U.S. tech industries. There are a number of reasons he does this. He first points out uncompetitive educational standards in the United States writing: "...the number of Americans obtaining science and engineering degrees is small and declining. In 1999, for example, the United States graduated 220,000 students with B.S. degrees, about the same as in 1985 and down 5 percent from ten years ago. China graduated 322,000 and India 251,000. Both countries have much larger populations, but their economies are only a fraction the size of the U.S. economy. Japan, with half the U.S. population graduated 235,000 with B.S. degrees." (132) He also points out the larger investments made by Asian governments in their high tech industries, noting that their lack of military spending, like in Japan for example, can be easily regarded as a boon to the nation's high tech sector. Furthermore, the author makes a reasonable observation regarding the difference in monetary trends between the United States and major Asian countries, specifically China and Japan. He points out that while American consumers insist on spending instead of saving, Asia is undergoing the reverse trend, that is, Asians spend little of their income and save much of it.
My own opinion is a little conflicted here. Without being too verbose, I'll say that for the short term I agree with Prestowitz that the government should intervene to improve educational standards, invest more in high-technology R&D, and perhaps even induce people to save instead of spend. In fact, as far as the short-term is concerned, I will go beyond what Prestowitz calls for and say that the government should also try to prevent an excessive migration of jobs out of the country. However, I feel that these actions are necessary only because they will mitigate the problems brought on by global competition in the coming decades. For future generations of Americans to secure jobs and earn a living, these interventions are necessary. However, they will only attack the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. I think to full ameliorate the problem there should be a strong movement to democratize the economic sphere, both domestically and internationally. The last few decades of economic history have seen an unprecedented aggrandizement of economic power and of capital liberalization. Because of the inherently undemocratic, top-down structure of corporate entities, I feel democratizing these institutions by means of egalitarian ownership and greater worker activism would fully remedy the current situation than would any other action.
Scary but Excellent Must Read
No need to write anything extensive as the prior reviewers have done a great job. I have found this book to be the most profound analysis of what is happening around the world to date. This book really sums things up and paints a grim picture of things to come in the USA. This book is miles above Thomas Friedmans breezy light cheerleading extolling the benefits of a flat world. This book is truly a must read.
Great Read on globalisation, economics and politics
Clyde has done a great job trying to explain how globalization, economics and politics is changing the way we live today. Even though he is from the conservative Reagan administration, he has unbiased opinions about the current economic situations around the globe.
He not only talks about China as a globalization power, but also talks about the shortcomings of the United States as the current economic super power.
This book is better that Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat"
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