Living standards will rise for these less-fortunate earthlings, he predicts. The real problems will come to countries with too few residents of working age. A relatively open immigration policy has already given the U.S. a competitive advantage in that department. World Boom Ahead includes an engrossing survey of future developments in industry and society, picking the relative winners and losers of the new economy. In a low-inflation climate, home prices will grow less steeply than in the past . . .
Cars now run on hydrogen fuel cells refilled twice a year.
This is a mind-boggling book. These authors see the present moment as a watershed in human history. Emerging technologies and new modes of deploying human capital, they argue, are in the process of bringing about an unprecedented leap in the progress of civilization. But an evolving civilization, in which all peoples are bound together by common interests and increasingly shared prosperity, will be able to work through such rough patches, in the view of Schwartz, Leyden, and Hyatt. Like all the authors mentioned here, though perhaps to a far greater degree, The Long Boom's visionaries have taken on the risk of being ridiculed, now or in the future.