Book Summary – That Used To Be Us – By Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

Thomas Friedman is a NY Times bestselling author. He wrote The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded, which are excellent books. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about our country. He outlines the problems and discusses methods to get us back on track as a leading innovative nation in the world.

Why is this important to me? I ask this question as if he were sitting in his shoes. This book in my humble opinion is a must read. The indifferent nature of the masses coupled with the political gridlock is crippling the nation and it affects us all. It doesn’t make sense that China has better rail systems than we do and Singapore has better airports than we do. And we just found out that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth, which used to be us. President Obama – 03/11/2010 Thomas and Michael describe the significant problems and some of the positive energy that still exists in the US For the sake of time, I will summarize each of the 5 parts. The four big challenges we face in the US are: how to adapt to globalization, how to adapt to the IT revolution, how to deal with huge budget deficits due to the growth of government, and how to manage in a world of increasing demand of energy and climate change. .

1. The Diagnosis – If you see something, say something. Humans have a unique way of adapting to the environment. Unfortunately, we adapt to bad things and begin to accept them as normal. The authors describe a story in which it has taken more than 6 months to fix two escalators with 21 steps each in a New York subway station. Politics, red tape and bureaucracy have basically killed the project. However, in China they can build a world-class convention center in 32 weeks. The scary part of all this is that: “People have gotten used to it.” Pretty soon we become desensitized to really stupid stuff and start accepting bureaucracy provided by people who get paid anyway. This is a very scary habit because the gap between the US and the rest of the world is widening and we are falling further and further behind. The country’s infrastructure is falling apart. A personal example: our building is located in Southfield Michigan and we pay $50,000 a year in property taxes. The road in front of our building will destroy the front of your car if you go over 20 miles per hour because the road is badly damaged.

2. The Education Challenge – This is no secret. We are funding education with investment dollars and it is not cash. We can fist fight all day about who is responsible, but the point is that the family has to take a proactive approach to education or the children will die on the vine. The key learning requirements are critical thinking, collaboration, and effective oral and written communication. There is another major issue in that children need to be responsible and work ethic needs to be established at an early age. The Chinese and the Indians outnumber us together. They are pushed by their parents to be successful. Success in the US has basically made the country lazy. This is similar to a championship boxer who is no longer hungry and does not work hard to remain a champion. The authors point to a quote from a businessman who says that he is in the business of eliminating jobs. He has all the reason. Basically we have to innovate and automate routine tasks. This means that software and intellectual property will take the place of mundane work. This continues to happen and why our education system requires critical thinking, problem solving, and sharp skills. According to Wikipedia, the US ranks 17th in the world for education, but the budget exceeds $900 billion annually. The execution and control of this expense is broken.

3. The war against mathematics and science – Arithmetic is not an opinion – Italian proverb. The war on math is simple: no one in government can add. We are borrowing money from China to go to war with Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Our poor spending is just that and investment is non-existent. In the 1960s, President Kennedy created a goal of being on the Moon in 10 years. What is the goal today? To support people and make sure they don’t have to work but still get their paychecks? Also, how can we let our banks leverage our future with derivatives and no one in management has any idea what happened? Worse than that, these executives were collectively paid hundreds of millions of dollars while accepting ransoms. This is the war against mathematics and common sense. As we said earlier, Americans have gotten used to it. The war against physics has to do with climate change and energy. The growth in energy demand and our lack of real investment in alternatives must change. Lobbyists and special interest groups prevent it.

4. Political failure: I am not going to blame the Democrats or the Republicans. I’ll blame both the network crash and the selfish nature of polls, money, and re-election. Our government for the last three years has gone into special session to make sure the “Economy” doesn’t self-destruct. Think about this for a minute. President Obama had to raise the debt ceiling, otherwise the effects on the economy would have been catastrophic. Those are his words. Is anyone listening? I guess we’re just “used to it”.

5. Rediscovering America – The good news is that for every problem there is a great opportunity to solve it. Accepting problems and attacking them head-on is the cornerstone of our history. The small businessman who transforms the world from his garage: all that happens here. This must be nurtured and problems solved from the bottom up. Waiting for big brother to fix our problems is the kiss of death. Don’t let Dumb and Dumber dictate your future. This is how our political system works and we are going to be run over by other nations if we do not take responsibility. I will stop preaching. This is a good book and it will open your eyes to problems. Remember that today’s news is not news but opinions. Bill Maher and Rush Limbaugh get paid for ratings. I hope you have found this brief summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes a habit. Habits are formed in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is that America needs leaders. This is still the greatest country in the world because we are free. This means that we must become leaders and lead from the bottom up. We have to take responsibility for continuous learning and innovation.

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