Provocative reading: a bad-case, if not worst-case, scenario that portends tough times ahead. Let’s hope Dent is erring on...
Talk about timing the market: Demographer Dent (The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History, 2009, etc.) studies generational trends that suggest hard times are in store, particularly for younger people entering the workforce.
Though the economy seems to be recovering, writes the author, this is a result of “endless government stimulus” that must come to an end. With the retirement of the baby boomer generation and the subsequent restrictions imposed on the economy by the fact that fewer workers will be replacing them, consumer spending will decline, since those workers will likely have less money to spend even as the boomers are in the “downward phase” in their own purchasing patterns. The “echo boomers,” whose births are spread out from 1976 to 2007, will eventually replace the baby boomers, and they’re significantly more numerous. Meanwhile, the Gen Xers—less than half the echo boomers’ number—are going to have to pull a lot of weight. The near-term result? A “coma economy” such as Japan’s. The good news, if it is in fact good news, is that China is not likely to overwhelm the West economically, since its demographic future is even more dire. The bad news for nativists is that in order to re-emerge economically, the United States will have to see a population growth to 420 million by 2060, and much of that will have to come from immigration, which is likely instead to slow in the coming “winter season.” Dent closes by examining the place of social entitlements in a newly austere economic landscape; refreshingly, he urges that “there should be “a government-driven one-payer system for the most basic health care services for all,” adding that the free market system is intended to benefit everyone, “not just the strongest.”
Provocative reading: a bad-case, if not worst-case, scenario that portends tough times ahead. Let’s hope Dent is erring on the side of pessimism.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59184-727-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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