The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America's Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era Book

Critically acclaimed author Clyde Prestowitz reveals the shocking extent of the deterioration of American economic strength that has put the United States on the brink of irreversibly losing our supremacy on the world stage and our prosperity at home. While the financial crisis has been a devastating blow, he shows that the wreckage of our economic might started much earlier. If we do not make decisive changes fast, he reveals, we will face the daunting challenges of living in a post-dollar world: wielding less and less power over world affairs, vulnerable to rising security threats, and left with a permanently lower standard of living. There is nothing inevitable about this slide, he argues, but fighting back will require recognizing—-and reversing—-a glaring set of errors made by our business and political leaders due to ideological adherence to deeply flawed doctrines of always-efficient markets and the purely positive effects of globalization.

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Publishers Weekly

High profile Washington economist Prestowitz (Three Billion New Capitalists) finds hope in the present economic collapse, which he believes will spur abandonment (however reluctantly) of "Laissez Faire Gobalization." As a campaign advisor to President Obama and a principal trade negotiator for Reagan, Prestowitz has repeatedly warned against disregarding foreign competition ("thinking of the United States as number one") as the U.S. suffers "a rapid erosion of its productive base." Overreliance upon capital markets that were actually "a corrupt, over-leveraged, house of cards" has shifted the global balance of power to Japan, China and Europe, regions with protectionist policies that the U.S. has failed to counter. The genesis of this downhill slide can be found in Cold War principles-low taxes, deregulation, privatization-necessitated by the times, but which have become enshrined at the expense of the New Deal "private sector-government partnership" that led to America's 20th century prosperity. An important contribution to the political debate, Prestowitz's volume suggests a number of solutions-abolishing the dividend tax, imposing a value-added tax, incentivizing foreign investment in the U.S., and doubling federal support of innovative technologies-all likely to prove controversial on both sides of the political divide.
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