I like most people like being told how smart I am. The next best thing to being told how smart you is to find agreement with your ideas. Here’s agreement with my thoughts. I get a certain guilty pleasure putting it up. This is a book review from the web site – Audiobooks Today Blog. Once I discovered the web site, I immediately favorited it. I’m not an audio book guide preferring to read but the book reviews are wonderful. You would enjoy it.
THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY by Clyde Prestowitz is a chilling examination of why the American Century is over, and how emerging countries like China will own the 21st. It unravels the history of our giving up production while increasing our consumption of imports, and what this portends for the U.S. unless a radical change of course is undertaken now, (and Americans get back to work doing what they once did six decades ago). Ominously, few in America act as if our affluence or standard of living will ever change, and instead continue to look to the government for bailouts while watching ball games on TV, yet when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner visited Beijing University in 2009—and told students there that the dollar was safe—their response was that THEY LAUGHED. Not only are our remaining high tech jobs moving overseas, along with the plants that make computer chips, but service jobs are moving to India too. To top it off, even as our infrastructure is failing and our debt is increasing, our baby boomers are now starting to retire in record numbers, expecting the government to help support them. Narrated by Erik Synnestvedt, the audiobook pulls no punches in attacking the shrug-away “don’t worry” attitude of the Bush administration, and a universal shortsightedness that focused on quarterly statements while muleishly wearing blinders about the future. Unless we start exporting something other than soda and cigarettes, Prestowitz reveals, Americans will soon be forced to give up the “something for nothing” mantra that has characterized our accumulation of debt on the backs of “third world” producers (including cheap oil for much longer) as they acquire “first world” status from us by owning all our industries.
Like me, the author finds the policies of the United States to be disastrous over the long term. Soon, a visitor to South America, no matter what nation, will notice the obvious similarities to our nation except some of them have much better statistics. What I mean by statistics is infant mortality rate and life span. Some of these nations has overtaken us in these areas.
This country is 38th in life expectancy. The United States of American is second rate in life expectancy in comparison to Costa Rico (and Cuba).
Just great. What’s next? A high infant mortality rate?
Oops! We’re 33rd. For every 1,000 births in this country, more than six children die. Guess who we’re behind this time? Cuba and Slovakia.
There’s 195 countries on the list. I wonder with our infrastructure disintegrating and our hospital system headed toward disaster, how low we can go. Maybe we can hit a round number like 100? What do you think?
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
I recently attended a seminar on my campus about our aging and failing electrical infrastructure. Our entire grid, from sea to shining sea, is in dire need of an upgrade. The problem is that the independent power companies don’t want to shell out the money to upgrade to a smart grid. Southern Company, for instance, told the documentary team that was speaking at this seminar that they would consider upgrading their grid if the federal government would help back it with grants.
That mindset is whats killing us. We, as Americans, are capable of magnificent things. Our history is full of ingenuity and overcoming impossible odds. We have the people, the material, and the brainpower to fix all of our current problems. What we seem to be lacking is motivation and a sense of national pride. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is dying, and I’m worried about the survival of the country once it is dead.
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