Amazon.com Review Professor Thurow once again demonstrates his insights into the global economy and a genius for pithy explanation in this masterful analysis of how the falling of Communism is leading, as inexorably as Continental Drift, to a new form of Capitalism. He identifies the challenges -- and opportunities -- in the shape-shifting of the world economy. His analyses of the rise of the capital of brainpower over traditional physical capital will be of especial interest to Internet users such as yourself. But the entire book is essential reading to anyone interested in our socioeconomic future. Highly recommended! From Publishers Weekly In a farsighted, magisterial report, influential Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Thurow brilliantly gauges the perils for U.S. capitalism in the emerging global economy. He warns that massive investments in skills and education are crucial if we are to cope with new technologies and with the shift to "brainpower industries" (communications, computers, etc.). Yet U.S. corporations, instead of integrating their skilled work forces into their organizations, are doing precisely the opposite and downsizing, observes Thurow with alarm. In place of a payroll tax, he proposes a progressive, value-added consumption tax to pay for pensions and health-care benefits for the elderly. In a multipolar world with no single dominant power, much of the U.S. military machine is essentially unusable and irrelevant, Thurow argues, and he envisions America playing an active but reduced role on the world stage. Appalled at our ever-lower personal-savings rate and staggering, still growing trade deficits, he predicts that the world's financial markets will soon clamp down on the U.S., with cataclysmic impact on Japan and on Third World development. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
