"Why Asia Will Eat Our Lunch "

[barb162]

(book review in "Business Week")

Why Asia Will Eat Our Lunch


THREE BILLION NEW CAPITALISTS
The Great Shift of Wealth
and Power to the East

By Clyde Prestowitz
Basic Books; 321pp; $26.95


(Readers' Reviews below)Editor's Review
The Good A clear, unbiased, and scary look at the threat that China and India pose to the U.S. economy.
The Bad It may be a tad pessimistic, given the author's tendency to assume current trends will continue.
The Bottom Line A persuasive argument that Washington's disdain for industrial policy is shortsighted.


Clyde Prestowitz says he had a revelation in 2003 when his oldest son, a software developer living on Lake Tahoe in California, asked him to co-invest in a snow-removal company. Why, wondered Prestowitz, would his high-tech offspring go into a business "as mundane as snow removal?" Explained the son: "Dad, they can't move the snow to India."

It's an example of the angst spreading among America's technology professionals as they watch India snare big chunks of the U.S. services sector while China runs off with America's manufacturing patrimony. His son's fears, Prestowitz asserts in Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, are all too rational.

Actually, Prestowitz didn't need the heads-up from his son. He has been mulling over America's competitiveness problems for 30 years, most recently as head of his own think tank -- the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. Before that he was an international executive for U.S. multinationals, a trade negotiator in the Reagan Administration, and author of a ground-breaking, although ultimately alarmist, 1988 book about U.S.-Japan relations, Trading Places. Prestowitz writes with clarity, historical perspective, and an uncommon ability to extricate himself from the intellectual straitjackets that hobble so many Washington economic policymakers. Free trader or protectionist? Democrat or Republican? Keynesian or supply-sider? He doesn't fit in any of those boxes.

snip

Prestowitz also challenges one of the most popular and soothing myths in Washington -- that U.S. workers can compete with any in the world if given "a level playing field." The truth: Western workers won't be able to compete without accepting wage cuts, since, in the area of labor costs, China enjoys a "fifteen to thirtyfold advantage" over the developed world.
snip
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938029_mz005.htm

(looks like a great book)

[tedoll78]

1. One reason I'll be an MRI technologist..

you can't scan someone's brain from over in India or China. I've gotta be here, with the patient. Now, the radiologists that actually read the films and diagnose the patient - they're a bit on-edge about this.

This topic may seem mundane and played-to-death, but I think it's gonna bite us in the ass hard.

[barb162]

2. It is't mundane at all. I think any job that isn't nailed down will

go offshore because the US government isn't about to stop it.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Very important topic and sounds like a good book.

Outsourcing is completely out of control.

[barb162]

7. when I was flipping through that Business Week they had huge sections

just on the "joys" or whatever of outsourcing. Listened to a commercial on TV for a large consulting firm and one of their 3 areas of specialty was outsourcing. The government could control/stop this crap if it wanted. People can't seem to see our way of life is going to end soon, if not because of outsourcing, then because of peak oil, because of a steep decline in the dollar, etc. I don't know what of the things will happen first.

[barb162]

9. wow just noticed you are just about at 14000 posts

[ladjf]

4. And they aren't in a right wing Christian or Muslim funk.

[KlatooBNikto]

5. You are right.As we plunge ever deeper into the mire of religious

orthodoxy, China and India appear to be extricating themselves from religion inspired superstitions. They have embraced Western rational thought with a vengeance.Their belief in science and its possibilities for transforming their lives appear boundless.

[barb162]

8. And I bet they are laughing their asses off that we are spending our

Treasury on a useless war. They don't have to fight us...we just ship them our technology, industry, jobs, (our might as a country)etc., for NOTHING.

[ladjf]

10. They are experiencing a "NeoAge of Reason".

We, on the other hand, are retrogressing. It won't be long before a "Neo-Inquistion" takes charge, if it hasn't already.

[ArkDem]

6. Not mine, I stay away from stir fry.