phungus's Full Review: Gabor Steingart - The War for Wealth: The Truth ab...
Gabor Steingart’s The War for Wealth is an interesting look at the future of globalization that looks back at the economic history of the world and makes some warnings/projections of what the future holds. The subtitle of this book is The True Story of Globalization, or Why the Flat World is Broken. It will make you think twice about buying something that was ‘Made in China’.
The author, Gabor Steingart, is a German economist who lives in Washington, D.C. He’s a senior correspondent for Der Spiegel and writes a weekly column called West Wing – The Battle for the White House. He’s also the international bestselling author of The Fall of Germany, which was made into a documentary.
In a nutshell, this book warns about the rising economic power of China. It talks of how so many leaders are all wrapped up in the ‘war on terror’ that they are letting China, as well as India, economically grow in leaps and bounds while American and European countries lose money. Steingart warns that if we don’t start being careful, China will overtake the rest of the world as the leading economic power. His concern is that Chinese human rights violations are only going to get worse as the country further industrializes, and that the rest of us who enjoy those cheap ‘Made in China’ products are contributing to the kind of problems we’d never tolerate in the United States.
In the early parts of this book, the author goes into a good bit of detail about the history of China and India. He writes about how internal problems kept these countries from growing for centuries, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that they started to put things back on track. While it took so long for these countries to get their act together, the result has been expeditious economic growth. He cites China as being a major contender in the electronics market, but also mentions how they are notorious for stealing technology. As for India, anyone who has ever had to call in for tech support to Dell or BellSouth knows how things are going there.
One thing that I didn’t like about this book, and was actually a cause for great concern to me, is that Steingart seems to be pro labor unions. He briefly mentions them in the book, but makes no connection between failing U.S. companies and the labor unions that are employed by them. Instead, he seems to think that China’s problems with child labor, excessive overtime, and unsafe conditions are because they don’t have worker’s unions. Personally, I think there should be some kind of happy medium. The reason is because I think the labor unions tend to do more damage than good because they demand too much. Wal-Mart once actually shut down a store after the workers unionized. When unions get to be too powerful and too demanding, they end up screwing over the companies they work for because they drive up the costs of goods sold. I’m surprised that Steingart failed to make this connection.
In the end, I found The War for Wealth to be quite compelling. It presents an interesting look at the future of the world economic status, and the author concludes with the suggestion that America and Europe must unite in order to strengthen forces. He supports this with a speech from President John F. Kennedy, given on Independence Day in 1962, and mentions how important Kennedy’s suggestion is today, now more than ever.
Disclaimer: I received this book as part of a promotional effort by the publisher, McGraw-Hill, on the website Gather.com. I was randomly chosen as one of ten people to get a free copy of the book in exchange for this review. I was not paid in any way and my obligation to write this review was nothing more than a gentlemen’s agreement.
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