America the Possible - 9780300180763

"The "New Economy Movement," as Gar Alperovitz described it in The Nation, is an effort to unite the various wings of progressive politics into a coherent set of ideas and programs that will be radically different from the current free-market paradigm. The movement arises out of environmentalism: the era of climate change, it asserts, demands a much deeper rethinking of American institutions than much of the political establishment is willing to contemplate. This book, as its title suggests, is the New Economy Movement's manifesto. Gus Speth argues that America faces four problems of such magnitude that any one of them could seriously undermine the nation. All four together will almost certainly lead to a crisis, especially since the problems interact with each other. The four problems are: 1. the growth of inequality in our country, which is not only an economic burden but a social one, as it is creating classes of people who have little knowledge of or sympathy for each others' lives, and little commitment to addressing the problems of others; 2. the increasingly onerous burden of foreign military commitments; 3. climate change; 4. our increasingly polarized and dysfunctional politics. It's the interactions that are the most frightening: how, for instance, will the U.S. respond to sea-level rise in Bangladesh that forces tens of millions of people to flee the coast for higher ground? This would not only create a humanitarian crisis but a diplomatic and military one as well. America, politically paralyzed and economically almost bankrupt, would be called upon to act or cede its strategic supremacy"--