Unsustainable

When financial journalist Eamonn Fingleton anticipated the meltdown of the New Economy in the late nineties, his predictions were dismissed by mainstream economic writers as "farfetched." Now, with the New Economy in ruins and America mired in recession, Fingleton's avowedly contrarian take on mainstream economic thinking is all the more urgent. Written in clear, lucid prose that renders the complexity of the world economy clear to the general reader, Unsustainable is a masterly survey of how the U.S. economy's turn from manufacturing to a more service-based, "postindustrial" economy--based on finance, entertainment, and computer software--has been an unmitigated disaster for working- and middleclass America and threatens the long-term viability of the U.S. economy. Taking on free market ideologues like Thomas Friedman, Fingelton shows how those who claim that a global service economy is the key to America's salvation are living in a fool's paradise. Completely revised and updated, this timely contribution is an indispensable survey of American's economic downturn.

First sentence: Time was you could you hardly pick up a newspaper without reading glowing accounts of the golden prospects supposedly in store for the United Sates in the so-called postindustrial era.

Year

2003

Language

English

Publisher

Nation Books

Editions

2

Pages

224

ISBN

9781560255147

Data source: Wikidata