Outrageous Fortunes
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Outrageous Fortunes

The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy

Daniel Altman
Times Books, 2011
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8

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  • Innovative
  • Overview
  • Visionary

Recommendation

With news from financial markets grabbing headlines each day, it is easy to overlook less-obvious yet powerful trends that could affect the global economy for decades to come. Economist Daniel Altman provides a synopsis of 12 of these trends, along with solutions and challenges to the problems and opportunities they present. While Altman’s big-picture forecast provides useful insight into current developments and what they may mean for the future, it suffers from a lack of on-the-ground perspective and, of course, even expert predictions are subject to unforeseen events. getAbstract recommends this smart assessment to those interested in possible long-term outcomes and solutions to today’s economic issues.

Summary

A Daunting Dozen

Twelve overarching developments seem likely to affect the world economy in the future:

1. “China Will Get Richer, and Then It Will Get Poorer Again”

Despite some recent setbacks, China’s economic growth has been formidable. Some studies predict that China will have the world’s largest economy by 2041. Yet a number of factors indicate that such projections are too optimistic. China’s current business climate is far from hospitable. According to the World Bank, it ranks 151st among 181 countries in ease of doing business, in part because entrepreneurs must meet onerous financial and legal requirements. The Chinese culture values the collective good over individualism and seniority over new ideas. Laws and education emphasize tradition, while a lack of transparency, coupled with corruption, compounds these issues. The demographic results of China’s one-child policy will make it difficult for its working-age population to support older citizens. While China prospers in the short term by appropriating technology or techniques from abroad, longer-term factors suggest it may have only a few decades of rapid growth left, stabilizing by 2050 and falling...

About the Author

Economist Daniel Altman is a best-selling author and an assistant adjunct professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

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