Addresses the opportunities & challenges involved in the greater opening of Asia Pacific markets for U.S. companies. Outlines a number of steps that could be taken to enhance American trade & investment relations with the Asia Pacific region. Presents observations, findings & recommendations on trade imbalance, investment, tariffs, private & public anti-competitive practices, anti-trust laws, & the importance of high technology to U.S. competitiveness. Charts, tables, graphs, & references. Appendix includes an overview of U.S. trade relations with the Asia Pacific region, 1980-1995. Also includes a 22-page report by the U.S. Nat. Comm. for Pacific Economic Coop., Beyond the Trade Bill: The Coming Pacific AdjustmentÓ (Jan. 1988).
"Reimagines the American dream and provides a bipartisan plan to recapture the greatness of the past through addressing important economic, social and environmental issues by making sustainability our country's new strategic imperative, "--NoveList.
Many Americans are enjoying the fruits of prosperity. Unemployment and inflation are low and it seems that everyone is driving a sport utility vehicle. But is this a prosperity that's reserved for the upper middle class, the folks driving the Jeep Cherokees? Or is something more fundamental happening? The answers are crucial for anyone interested in how America is changing--from corporate executives to policy makers to the average person keeping up with current issues. Bob Davis and David Wessel have spent thousands of hours in living rooms and workplaces around the country, and they show conclusively that the recent good economic news not only is here to stay but is the start of twenty years of broad-based prosperity. Prosperity tells stories about how the lives of the middle class are changing for the better. These are the people who are still being wrongly consigned b y prophets of doom and gloom to the sidelines of the new high-tech economy. People like: Randy Kohrs, whose training in respiratory therapy at a local community college has lifted him from dead-end, minimum-wage jobs into the ranks of the middle class Teresa Wooten, a former worker in a low-wage South Carolina clothing factory, who is now a supervisor in a German-owned factory The workers at the Allen-Bradley plant in Milwaukee, who are benefiting in wages and transferable job skills form the company's recent computer automation These and many other remarkable stories bring together the three trends that will be the basis for a new, middle-class prosperity: Our $2 trillion investment in computer and communications technology will finally pay off in faster productivity growth, a morerapidly growing economy, and rising living standards. Community colleges are helping millions of Americans move from $7-an-hour jobs. This unheralded change in U.S. education will help reverse the forces that have widened the chasm between more-educated and less-educated workers. Globalization--much maligned by pundits on the left and the right--will create new and better jobs by U.S. companies that export to developing countries and by foreign companies that build plants and offices in the United States. Davis and Wessel's front-line account, combined with persuasive evidence of the tangible benefits reaching the middle class, proves that the American dream is not only alive and well, but will reach more people than ever before.
CONSIDER THIS SHOCKING FACT: while China’s number one export to the United States is $46 billion of computer equipment, the number one export from the U.S. to China is waste—$7.6 billion of waste paper and scrap metal. Bestselling author Clyde Prestowitz reveals the astonishing extent of the erosion of the fundamental pillars of American economic might—beginning well before the 2008 financial crisis—and the great challenge we face for the future in competing with the economic juggernaut of China and the other fast-rising economies. As the arresting facts he introduces show, the U.S. is rapidly losing the basis of its wealth and power, as well as its freedom of action and independence. If we do not make dramatic changes quickly, we will confront a painful permanent slide in our standard of living; the dollar will no longer be the world’s currency; our military strength will be whittled away; and we will be increasingly subject to the will of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and various malcontents. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As Prestowitz shows in a masterful account of how we’ve come to this fateful juncture, we have inflicted our economic decline on ourselves—we abandoned the extraordinary approach to growth that drove the country’s remarkable rise to superpower status from the early days of the republic up through World War II. For most of our history, we supported our home industries, protected our market against unfair trade, made the world’s finest products—leading the way in technological innovation—and we were strong savers. But in the post-WWII era, we reversed course as our leadership embraced a set of simplistically attractive but disastrously false ideas—that consumption rather than production should drive our economy; that free trade is always a win-win; that all globalization is good; that the market is always right and government regulation or intervention in the economy always causes more harm than good; and that it didn’t matter that our factories were fleeing overseas because we were moving to the "higher ground" of services. In a devastating account, Prestowitz shows just how flawed this orthodoxy is and how it has gutted the American economy. The 2008 financial crisis was only its most blatant and recent consequence. It is time to abandon these false doctrines and to get back to the American way of growth that brought us to world leadership; Prestowitz presents a deeply researched and powerful set of highly practical steps that we can begin implementing immediately to reverse course and restore our economic leadership and excellence. The Betrayal of American Prosperity is vital reading for all Americans concerned about the future of the economy and of our power in the coming era.
In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.
Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment -- paired with rampant nepotism and cronyism -- on a country's economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better. In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt systems found throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world. American capitalism, according to Zingales, grew in a unique incubator that provided it with a distinct flavor of competitiveness, a meritocratic nature that fostered trust in markets and a faith in mobility. Lately, however, that trust has been eroded by a betrayal of our pro-business elites, whose lobbying has come to dictate the market rather than be subject to it, and this betrayal has taken place with the complicity of our intellectual class. Because of this trend, much of the country is questioning -- often with great anger -- whether the system that has for so long buoyed their hopes has now betrayed them once and for all. What we are left with is either anti-market pitchfork populism or pro-business technocratic insularity. Neither of these options presents a way to preserve what the author calls "the lighthouse" of American capitalism. Zingales argues that the way forward is pro-market populism, a fostering of truly free and open competition for the good of the people -- not for the good of big business. Drawing on the historical record of American populism at the turn of the twentieth century, Zingales illustrates how our current circumstances aren't all that different. People in the middle and at the bottom are getting squeezed, while people at the top are only growing richer. The solutions now, as then, are reforms to economic policy that level the playing field. Reforms that may be anti-business (specifically anti-big business), but are squarely pro-market. The question is whether we can once again muster the courage to confront the powers that be.
"Growing Prosperity could well be as important in shaping our future as Keynes' General Theory. . . . A work as meticulous as it is powerful, as promising as it is persuasive."—Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers "Bluestone and Harrison have alerted us to the key issue confronting America: how to achieve growth with equity. This country needs a powerful dialogue on how to continue growth while deepening its benefits to all Americans. This is the blueprint for the terms of that debate."—U.S. Representative Richard Gephardt
Lazonick explores the origins of the new era of employment insecurity and income inequality, and considers what governments, businesses, and individuals can do about it. He also asks whether the United States can refashion its high-tech business model to generate stable and equitable economic growth. --from publisher description.
