Natalie Gonnella
This weekend, Britain's Telegraph newspaper offered a fantastic look at Dambisa Moyo's new book: How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly--and the Stark Choices Ahead.
The author of the controversial Dead Aid, in her latest work, Moyo examines "how a host of shortsighted policy decisions have left the economic seesaw poised to tip away from the Western industrialized economies and toward the emerging world."
For the US, Moyo says the impact will be the country's transformation to a "venal" socialist state, caused by years of damaging "economic policies and a society that rapaciously feeds on itself.”
During the Telegraph interview with Andrew Cave, Moyo explained that in the West, through our governments' best intentions, we have created some of the most harmful consquences to our economic well being. Citing the example of retirement income, Moyo referred to pensions as the "the next great Ponzi scheme after Madoff."
Discussing the books "long term" focus on current fiscal concerns, Moyo said:
People are missing the bigger issues because the way the political structure is set up encourages you to focus on the immediate, rather than what I would say are the important issues, the structural things which have been going on for 50 odd years.
And while she says it won't be easy to change direction, Moyo does offer solutions:
By forging closer ties with the emerging economies, rethinking trade barriers, overhauling their tax systems to encourage savings rather than ravenous consumption, and specifically addressing the three essential ingredients for growth (capital, labour and technology) it might yet still be possible for the West to firmly get back in the race.
A former Goldman Sachs economist, Moyo is one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders" and in 2009 she was named as one of TIME's 100 most influential people.
How the West was Lost will be released in the US in February. Andrew Cave's book review and full interview with Dambisa Moyo can be read here.
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