Daniel Altman

An interesting book on the main trends the author sees in the medium term, dating from 2012 so that the reader can make a decent comparison. The author himself says that he was surprised that some of the prognostications seemed to be coming true even as the first edition was reaching the store shelves (2009). Of course, almost any prediction willprobably come true if enough time lapses. Not to play the spoiler, but vertain predictions seem to be realistic: China will become richer and then poorer, the European Union will break up. An engaging read, compact by today's standards (only around 250 pages!), and informative even though somewhat dated and concerned with economies rather than geo-politics and war.… (mere)

I gave this three stars simply based upon the choice of topic, not because I was particularly impressed with either the author's arguments or writing style. In essence, he came up with an interesting theory and then proceeded only to marshal those facts that supported it. In sum, he believes that there's a cadre -- and that term is his own -- of economists in the Bush II Administration who have decided that the one and only way to bring about economic prosperity is to encourage capital accumulation through the reduction in taxes on dividends and capital gains, and that they're sticking to their theory whatever the facts and circumstances may dictate. And that they've by and large won over the president, and that we have no way of really knowing how successful they're going to be as we go forward. The most important name to remember is Martin S. Feldstein, an economist and Harvard professor who has either been behind or had his former students behind tax cuts the economic policies of Bush II.

Altman's writing style is frankly rather irritating, as he throws in silly examples about how budget deficits equate with a pair of flip-flops for every day of the year, and the overuse of his neologism "neoconomy", including "neoconomists." He also tries to present himself as objective when he is nothing of the sort: he clearly opposes what the Bush Admin II is trying to do, yet lacks the courage to actually say so. And candidly it probably would have been a better work had he laid his cards on the table. An example of what I mean: Paul O'Neill's income is used in a table to demonstrate the wealth of the Bush Admin cabinet, yet O'Neill is also quoted as opposing at least some of the tax cuts, and was quickly dumped from the Cabinet. And (per Altman) never had much in the way of real power anyway.

But despite the above reservations, Altman is seemingly on to something that I haven't really heard much about. He gets credit for recognizing the above.… (mere)