The Post-American World: Release 2.0 [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria

"The Post-American World" is the insightful book about world affairs and America's role. The author makes compelling arguments that it is the "rise of the rest" and not America's decline at the heart of this global era. This 336-page book is composed of the following seven chapters: 1. The Rise of the Rest, 2. The Cup Runneth Over, 3. A Non-Western World? 4. The Challenger, 5. The Ally, 6. American Power and 7. American Purpose.

Positives:
1. Well-written and well-researched book.
2. Accessible book for the masses.
3. A fascinating topic in the hands of a master.
4. An even-handed book. Mr. Zakaria is fair.
5. Engaging prose that offers countless anecdotes and interesting facts.
6. A lot of misconceptions put to rest: "Poverty is falling in countries housing 80 percent of the world's population". "War and organized violence have declined dramatically over the last two decades".
7. Economics in an enlightening manner, "It was not the Great Depression that brought the Nazis to power in Germany but rather hyperinflation, which destroyed the middle class by making its savings worthless".
8. The three forces that impact the global international environment: politics, economics, and technology.
9. The impact of global growth on natural resources and the environment.
10. Fascinating facts throughout the book,"from 2003 to 2020, the number of vehicles in China will rise from 26 million to 120 million". Wow.
11. Does a great job of explaining the various challenges facing the planet.
12. What the global economy has turned into...
13. National debt at the heart of our problem. $14 trillion...
14. Interesting history.
15. How our world is shrinking.
16. Did you know that women's clothing is a powerful indicator of a society's comfort with modernity? You do now...and much more where that came from.
17. Brief but interesting look at religions that form the rising powers.
18. 1979 as a watershed year for the globe.
19. A fascinating look at China, worth the price of the book. An entire chapter.
20. Walmart and its connection to China.
21. Why China and the Unites States need each other.
22. An insightful look at India. An entire chapter. Great stuff!
23. India's nuclear aspirations.
24. Interesting British history and the ways it compares to ours.
25. American military domination.
26. The economic challenges of America.
27. America's strengths and weaknesses.
28. A very interesting look at our educational system and how it stacks up against the world. Educational indeed.
29. What is America's best industry? Find out.
30. The impact of immigration.
31. The biggest economical threats to our country.
32. The impact of free trade.
33. Sensible reforms that should be enacted.
34. Dysfunctional politics.
35. The six guidelines on how the United States can operate in this new world.
36. Positive future, it's up to us.
37. Links worked great. Excellent notes section.

Negatives:
1. Loved the chapters on China and India but would have loved a chapter on Germany and/or Brazil.
2. Excellent notes section but it never hurts to have a separate bibliography.
3. Charts and illustrations would have added value.
4. The author does speculate and may suffer from moments of grandeur.
5. Too little emphasis on finite resources and the impact to the planet.

In summary, I enjoyed reading this book. Mr. Zakaria took me on a wonderful journey to China and India and provided fascinating information. It provides an excellent summary of global affairs and how this will impact the United States. I highly recommend this book!

Further recommendations: "That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back..." by Thomas Friedman , "The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality" by Richard Heinberg, "The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment" by Chris Martenson, and "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future (Vintage)" by Robert B. Reich.

Kindle Edition rating.

I Just downloaded the Kindle version of this book only to discover it is the first edition from 2009. It is an interesting read, however it was confusing to notice that I was buying the older edition - not the recently revised and updated version as I clicked on the Kindle Edition link on the V2.0 edition page to download it.

Fareed Zakaria has emerged in recent years as one of America's best minds with respect to foreign policy and international relations. His recent book, The Post-American World, touches on several issues near and dear to our own research. The gloomy title aside (this book got quite a bit of notoriety when then-candidate Barrack Obama was seen reading it during his campaign), Zakaria is actually rather optimistic about the economic prospects of the United States. He does discuss the role of demographics in America's position in the world, which is a good start.

As this book has already been reviewed by countless others, we will steer clear of the sections most often reviewed, which are generally foreign policy related and compare the United States today with the British Empire last century. We'll start instead with Mr. Zakaria's commentary on the US health and pension system, which echoes our own work on the subject:

"Consider the automobile industry. For a century after 1894, most of the cars manufactured in North America were made in Michigan. Since 2004, Michigan has been replaced by Ontario, Canada. The reason is simple: healthcare. In America, car manufacturers have to pay $6,500 in medical and insurance costs for every worker. If they move a plant to Canada, which has a government-run health care system, the cost to the manufacturer is around $800 per worker. In 2006, General Motors paid $5.2 billion in medical and insurance bills for active and retired workers. That adds $1,500 to the cost of every GM car sold. For Toyota, which has fewer American retirees and many more foreign workers, that cost is $186 per car. This is not necessarily an advertisement for the Canadian health care system, but it does make clear that the costs of the American healthcare system have risen to a point that there is a significant competitive disadvantage to hiring American workers."

Zakaria also makes the point that tying healthcare to employment tends to tie people to their jobs and lesson their ability to leave lest they lose their health insurance. It also tends to make them fear free trade and globalization. The result is that the American economy is less dynamic and productive that it would have been under a more fluid labor market.

Moving on, Zakaria also refers to demographics as America's "secret weapon," at least vis-à-vis Europe and East Asia:

"All in all, Europe presents the best short-term challenge to the United States in the economic realm. But Europe has one crucial disadvantage. Or, to put more accurately, the United States has one crucial advantage over Europe and most of the developed world. The United States is demographically vibrant. Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that the U.S. population will increase by 65 million by 2030, while Europe's will remain 'virtually stagnant.' Europe, Eberstadt notes, 'will by that time have twice as many seniors as older than 65 than children under 15, with drastic implications for future aging. (Fewer children now means fewer workers later.) In the United States, by contrast, children will continue to outnumber the elderly.... Some of these demographic problems could be ameliorated if older Europeans chose to work more, but so far they do not, and trends like these rarely reverse.'"

This goes to show that, with demographics, it's all relative. The United States does indeed have a better long-term demographic prognosis than Europe or East Asia. But that doesn't mean that the prognosis is good. "Less bad" doesn't mean good.

Furthermore, Zakaria falls into the same trap as most economists that have approached this issue. He focuses on demographics as it applies to workers. The Sizemore Investment Letter focuses instead on the demographic characteristics of consumers. As Japan has proven for nearly two decades, a country can still produce with an aging workforce, but it ceases to consume at the same pace. And in an economy dominated by consumer spending, this is a problem.

The Post-American World is full of other interesting points that deserve more space than we can offer here. We highly recommend this book for your summer reading. History buff will also like some of Zakaria's prior works, including From Wealth to Power