Review by Choice Review
Those in the US who demonize foreign trade and globalization and worry about the current disparity in incomes between highly educated persons and those less so will find cogent refutation in this book, authored by two skilled, award-winning reporters for the The Wall Street Journal. The authors identify three major forces in the next 20 years that will provide broadly based prosperity: increased and more efficient technology, better education, and globalization. Productivity may be expected to surge beyond its lagging performance since 1973--empowered by more sophisticated use of computers, reorganization of workplaces, and a closer match of skills and job openings. The latter will be achieved by the elimination of the chasm and income disparities between more educated and less educated workers, as community colleges remedy skill shortages and technology becomes easier to use. Several chapters on the third major factor, globalization, argue powerfully for the benefits of international trade accruing to both low-wage and high-wage nations. All of this is presented in a lively, reliable, and sometimes fascinating fashion that overcomes any burden from the myriad facts, figures, and cases cited. Highly recommended for public, academic, and professional collections. H. I. Liebling; Lafayette College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Davis and Wessel are award-winning journalists who report daily on economic affairs for the Wall Street Journal and who, in their travels throughout the country, see reasons to be optimistic about America's future. While others have offered statistics to show that there is a growing and dangerous disparity between the incomes of the rich and those of the poor, these two writers see trends that suggest, instead, that there will be a "broadly shared prosperity" for America's middle class. They argue that our current situation parallels the early years of the twentieth century, when slow growth and a widening inequality were followed by a "burst of innovation and prosperity." While others bemoan the disparate effects of technology, globalization, and our educational system, Davis and Wessel explain why we only now are beginning to see the positive results of these influences. They marshal examples showing the benefits we will soon reap from the reorganized workplace, the community college system, technological breakthroughs, and expanded and free foreign trade. --David Rouse
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The American middle class has remained economically stagnant for the past 25 years, despite endless prophecies during this time that computer technology would bring a new age of productivity and prosperity; the authors, both with the Wall Street Journal, explain why this has been so and why it may soon change. Computers have not, so far, created huge leaps in productivity because that is not the way technology works, say the authors; it is not a ``quick fix'' (General Motors spent billions of dollars in the 1980s ``robotizing'' its production, and promptly lost about the same amount of money). Just as it took decades for producers, both managers and workers, to learn how to adapt the new technology of electricity to their work processes in the early part of this century, the same is true with computers today. New technology must still be refined (computers for the most part have been maddeningly and unnecessarily complex), and the creative integration of computers into the processes of producing goods and services has yet to fully occur. It has taken time to realize that computers will not replace people but, more significantly, allow them to do more. The authors carefully analyze signs that computers are finally ready to create a burst of sustained productivity. At the same time, the middle class will share in this productivity as it reeducates itself to use and help refine this new technology on the job. Finally, the forces of economic globalizationĀdislocating as these forces have beenĀare now creating in the US a net increase not only in jobs but in better-paying jobs. Davis and Wessel's arguments are not always new and not always convincing, yet they bring to this work elements often missing from popular writing on the technological future: solid reporting, detailed research, and a regard for historical context. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
