Synopses & Reviews
Thomas Friedman has made a very successful career of championing globalization and proclaiming that the world is flat. The only problem, says veteran foreign correspondent Martin Sieff, is that Friedman's view of America's economic future and the policies he recommends are flat wrong; they are the reason millions of American jobs have been shipped overseas and may never come back.
In That Should Still Be Us, Sieff convincingly refutes Thomas Friedman's fantasies and many fallacies in Friedman's bestselling books, The World Is Flat and That Used to Be Us, and presents a radically different vision and road map for America's economy and its future.
Sieff refutes Friedman's claims on everything from immigration and free trade to alternative energy and the "need" to encourage tens of thousands of small start-ups to grow the economy and put America back to work. He demonstrates that the crumbling of the nation's infrastructure and the disappearance of its manufacturing base are not caused by economic forces beyond anyone's control; they are the direct result of policy choices begun with lowering tariffs in the 1960s and continued with disastrous free-trade agreements that have sucked the life and the jobs out of a once-dynamic economy.
What really makes Sieff furious are Friedman's contempt for the American worker and his seeming delight that the average citizen is running out of ways to earn a living. Friedman, Sieff says, takes joy in imagining a future in which anyone without an MBA or a PhD will be relegated to the position of "server" for those who innovate. Sieff makes a strong case that the American worker has been the source of countless innovations and that old-fashioned, not cutting-edge, industry is the only foundation on which true innovation can be built. He also points out that China's industrial base is growing not because its people work harder or cheaper, but because it protects its industries through tariffs, currency manipulation, and other methods.
Throughout this stirring call to arms, Sieff provides sensible, workable solutions for reversing America's decline and propelling the nation into a new age of prosperity and growth. He offers a practical trade and energy strategy to restore industrial strength in the twenty-first century and explains why the US economy will soon depend on producing low-carbon footprint natural gas, reviving its manufacturing sector, and protecting its industry from unfair foreign competition and artificially manipulated exchange rates.
If the world is flat, as Thomas Friedman insists, why does the future he imagines look so lopsided? That Should Still Be Us strips away the illusions that support those bleak predictions and points the way toward an American future that is brighter, more promising, and far more prosperous.
Synopsis
Chronicles the damage Thomas Friedman's flat wrong, ""Flat Earth"" ideas have caused to the American economyAs Martin Sieff convincingly argues, Thomas Friedman's prescriptions have played a major role in causing America's economic decline, yet many executives and politicians, including President Obama, still look to him as their guru. Sieff exposes Friedman fallacies on the nature of globalization, the information technology revolution, political paralysis in Washington, and energy consumption. He documents how China is investing far more in locking up the world's oil and gas reserves than in developing the ineffective green technologies Friedman claims they love. He exposes Friedman's most acclaimed ideas as retreads of naïve fantasies widely believed and exposed as useless a century ago.
- Convincingly refutes Thomas Friedman's fantasies and many fallacies in his best-selling books, The World Is Flat and That Used to Be Us, and presents a radically different vision and road map for America's economy and its future
- Offers a practical trade and energy strategy to restore American prosperity and industrial strength in the twenty-first century
- Explains why America's economy will soon depend on producing low-carbon footprint natural gas, reviving its manufacturing sector, and protecting its industry from unfair foreign competition and artificially manipulated exchange rates
- Written by veteran journalist Martin Sieff, a regular contributor to FoxNews.com and Chief Global Analyst at The Globalist Research Center
Synopsis
Just a few of the destructive, ludicrous fantasies of Thomas Friedman, Exposed at Last!
Americans would be better off building free iPhone apps than cars.
The only workers who innovate are the ones in IT or with PhDs.
Facebook & Twitter create lots of jobs.
America's biggest problem is that our workers don't want to work as hard as those in other nations (when, in fact, they actually work harder).
"China is not the problem," even though we have a $270 billion annual trade deficit with China.
Shipping good jobs from a solid democracy like America to a dictatorship like China will somehow make the world more free.
Trade barriers are falling everywhere, even though Russia, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, & the OPEC countries protect their domestic economies.
America will soon achieve energy independence if we stop horizontal fracturing for oil and gas.
Higher American fuel bills will ultimately be good for Americans.
Wind, solar power, & biomass can completely replace oil, coal, & natural gas.
Synopsis
Chronicles the damage Thomas Friedman's flat wrong, "Flat Earth" ideas have caused to the American economyAs Martin Sieff convincingly argues, Thomas Friedman's prescriptions have played a major role in causing America's economic decline, yet many executives and politicians, including President Obama, still look to him as their guru. Sieff exposes Friedman fallacies on the nature of globalization, the information technology revolution, political paralysis in Washington, and energy consumption. He documents how China is investing far more in locking up the world's oil and gas reserves than in developing the ineffective green technologies Friedman claims they love. He exposes Friedman's most acclaimed ideas as retreads of naïve fantasies widely believed and exposed as useless a century ago.
- Convincingly refutes Thomas Friedman's fantasies and many fallacies in his best-selling books, The World Is Flat and That Used to Be Us, and presents a radically different vision and road map for America's economy and its future
- Offers a practical trade and energy strategy to restore American prosperity and industrial strength in the twenty-first century
- Explains why America's economy will soon depend on producing low-carbon footprint natural gas, reviving its manufacturing sector, and protecting its industry from unfair foreign competition and artificially manipulated exchange rates
- Written by veteran journalist Martin Sieff, a regular contributor to FoxNews.com and Chief Global Analyst at The Globalist Research Center
About the Author
Martin Sieff is a columnist at FoxNews.com, Chief Global Analyst at The Globalist Research Center, and Editor-at-Large at The Globalist. A former Managing Editor, International Affairs for United Press International, he is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East and Shifting Superpowers: The New and Emerging Relationship between the United States, China, and India.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 Seven Billion 17
2 Rising Dragon 35
3 Oil and Why We’ll Always Need It 55
4 America the Abundant 72
5 False Prophets 89
6 True Leaders 110
7 The Hidden Hand in Global History 127
8 Free Trade and the Downfall of America 152
9 The Fools Who Lost the Secrets 173
Epilouge 197
Acknowledgments 201
Index 203