that used to be us

HOMAS Friedman is one of America’s most famous journalists, and Michael Mandelbaum one of its most distinguished academic experts on foreign policy. Friedman has contributed extensively on global affairs and economy for the last three decades and is gifted with a rare ability of discussing complex and intricate issues lucidly. They speak for free trade, open immigration, balanced budgets, green energy, consumption taxes, health care reforms and investment in education and infrastructure.

That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World We Invented — and How We Can Come Back is an attempt to alert America to the dangers it is facing and offer some prescriptions for a revival. The “frustrated optimists” describe a country whose people are falling behind, a political system increasingly paralysed and institutions that seem even more inadequate to meet even more intractable challenges. They assert that the United States has a political system generating only small responses to big problems.

The authors say that “our country is in slow decline, just slow enough for us to be able to pretend or believe that a decline is not taking place.” They have identified that massive budget deficits, political gridlock, economic inertia and underperforming schools are the major problems. Friedman and Mandelbaum, in order to substantiate their contentions, have elicited expert opinions from political, academic and business leaders to explain this torpid state of American affairs.

America is falling behind emerging nations and is destined to fall further in the 21st century, they say. The authors identified four mistakes that they believe are key to America’s gradual slippage: misreading the end of the Cold War which brought a new challenge...

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... way that includes the rediscovery of some of the country’s most vital traditions and the creation of a new third party movement to galvanise the country.

The authors argue that empowering innovation from every worker must become a priority for employers, the military, schools, and policy makers, if America has to retain its international standing. The principle driving forces behind a more inventive worker is “access to more automation, more software, more machines and more people, and more talent of an above average quality”. The implication is that workers who just fulfill their mundane job descriptions are finding themselves left behind in the recession. The authors suggest that training of workers in every sector needs drastic changes which will inculcate entrepreneurial skills, creative thinking and an urge for acquiring knowledge in order to be more adaptive.