How to fix America

Happily he defines the merits of innovation as broad-based prosperity that is realised by job creation on a mass scale, which by implication means average to low skill levels. If innovation doesn’t come about in this manner, then future progress will only exacerbate the ever-widening income gulfs between the haves and the want-to-haves.

His straightforward book, apart from targeting growing income inequality and stagnant median incomes, finally glosses over the GFC. He is spare in his recitation of the causes and even more so on the consequences of the GFC, glibly dismissing or not even mentioning the use (or misuse) of derivative trading, mistakes made by the Federal Reserve and obscenely generous compensation packages to name a few. According to Cowen, the font of the financial disaster is that “we thought were richer than we were”.

Cowen’s essay is a joy to read. The fun is abetted by the active prose and the writer’s capacity to make the reader stop, think and question what passes for the hallmarks of a successful economy.

There are, unfortunately, many voids in his argument: little analysis is made of the spiralling U.S. health care costs, no analysis is offered of the active role politicians had in jump starting the sub prime crisis, and as for the newest ball to kick around the United States Congress – demonising China’s about its alleged manipulation of its currency – Cowen offers a stone silence.

If public debate is the hallmark of a book’s capacity to rectify society’s ills, then David Brookes of the New York Times was just plain wrong in his fawning over the book, depicting it as “the most debated non fiction book so far this year.” While the book is interesting, it isn’t that significant. Furthermore, Brookes was factually incorrect. Amy Chua’s the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the most debated non-fiction book of the year. And not without reason.