An assessment of America’s political,
economic and ideological future that ranges far and wide
Time to Start Thinking: America and the
Spectre of Decline, by Edward Luce, Little, Brown, RRP£20, 320 pages
Woe,
woe, all is woe. America is on the skids, the Chinese are not so much coming as
have arrived, and time is running out. Edward Luce’s pessimistic assessment of
the state of the nation ranges far and wide. The known targets are lined up and
knocked flat – a gridlocked political system, a rancorous political culture,
the distortions caused by Wall Street’s remuneration deals, the inadequacy of
so much primary and secondary education, the rotting infrastructure
(“Michigan’s highways remind me of Venezuela”), an anti-science ideology, the
fabulously expensive healthcare system with its relatively poor outcomes – and
much more besides.
But
Luce is too good and too provocative to settle his case at this point. What
really upsets him in Time to Start Thinking is that so many Americans who
should know better don’t seem to realise how serious the challenges are. Worse,
such fundamental virtues as the nation’s genius for innovation, creativity and
pragmatism have themselves been so corroded that, unlike in previous crises,
America may this time not find enough of the solutions.
I found
myself from the outset wanting to quarrel with Luce, a former Washington bureau
chief and now chief US commentator of this paper. After all, an apparently
declining US has given us the wonders of Google and Facebook, outstanding
medical research, brilliant satellite technology. The Nobel Prizes are still
coming and the top universities dominate any world league table. American soft
power, although enfeebled by aspects of its foreign policy, has not vanished
either. Hollywood, HBO, Coca-Cola, the New York Yankees (look at who wears the
caps) and Bruce Springsteen all add to Brand USA.
But
Luce does far more than collect and display American contemporary discontents,
and by the end of the book this fan of America was a great deal more anxious
about the health of the republic. His statistics include telling ones about the
decline in median income for the American middle class – in contrast to the
rich pickings enjoyed by those at the top – and healthcare ($2.38 an hour for
every American employee’s healthcare coverage – 98 cents in the remainder of
the rich world). But there are some sideways ones that make their point. Try
this: the average salary for a high school sports coach in Texas is $73,000,
over $30,000 more than for a teacher in any other field at the same grade.
Nor
does America’s brightest spot, Silicon Valley, emerge unscathed. It may still
be the “likeliest parent of disruptive technologies” (good) but annual
fundraising has plummeted to less than a sixth of its peak (bad). And the
Valley’s venture capitalists are attracted to the talent in Mumbai and Tel Aviv
rather than opening more offices in the US – where the system is churning out
too few science and engineering PhDs, and far too many MBAs.
Luce is
analytically at his most interesting about the role of government in developing
industry. He is not a protectionist – though as he mourns the collapse of
American manufacturing employment, looks at the privileges of American
agriculture and genuflects on Lincoln’s civil war tariff walls, he concludes
that a little bit of roughing up of the Chinese is in order. He is a big fan of
Alexander Hamilton – the founding father who believed in nurturing American
infant industries. And he repeatedly attacks the anti-government rhetoric
spouted by so many American business types and conservative politicians that
ignores the massive role played by government in both funding and organising
research and development. In a book largely more critical of the contemporary
right than the left (though all share the blame), the Reagan administration is
praised for helping the US computer chip industry beat off the threat of
Japanese dumping, and that of Dwight Eisenhower for boosting public education.
Eisenhower it was who warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex,
but it had its uses – IBM’s research budget for one.
But
despite these forays into economic philosophy, this is a reporter’s work and
Luce is a very good reporter. He has spoken to a terrific array of characters –
including eccentric entrepreneurs, bankers, captains of old industries, new
technology evangelists, senior politicians, an admiral, academics, a community
college head, a recruitment agency boss, brilliant immigrant students who are
“going back” (ie away from the US). Best of all are his vivid portraits of
Americans struggling to get by, assailed by what he calls “the hollowing out”
of America’s middle class. There is the former worker at Goodyear who retrained
as a jobbing lawyer and can just pay the medical bills, the male nurse who
started as an electrician at General Motors, and the Minneapolis couple trying
to support an autistic son while doing 20 hours of voluntary work a week. These
passages are poignant – a homage to decency – and there is still a lot of that
left in the US.
Of
course, predicting America’s demise is not new. In 1979 Ezra Vogel, a brilliant
Harvard scholar of Asia, wrote the much-vaunted Japan as Number One. Now it
serves as a reminder of the dangers of the prophecy business and of writing off
America. Luce would agree that this is fraught with risk but, still, it’s
getting late – and the election campaign has hardly helped.
Mark
Damazer
ft.com
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