Futurecast 2020 -by Robert Shapiro

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Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live and Work by Robert J. Shapiro. St. Martin’s Press. 2008. 358 pages. $26.95.

Three powerful global forces are currently reshaping humanity’s near-term future, writes former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Robert J. Shapiro in his new book Futurecast. These forces are globalization, an aging world population, and America’s unchallenged position as the world’s sole military superpower. Analyzing them, Shapiro creates a “global blueprint” that charts the likely course of the planet over the next decade and a half.

Most of the discussion revolves around the impact of globalization, which Shapiro believes will produce the greatest amount of change, as it breaks down barriers and opens up economies. He argues that the United States (along with the rest of the world) has no choice but to embrace globalization, despite its drawbacks and limitations. In fact, globalization will ultimately favor the United States and China, while creating much greater economic challenges for Europe and Japan (whose economies are significantly less productive overall). Indeed, the economic futures of America and China are intrinsically linked, for better or for worse, now that China has emerged as an economic superpower. One reason for this connection is the seemingly endless shift of production jobs to China, which provides a seemingly endless supply of low-skilled, low-wage workers.

“A decade from now, America will still be the world’s largest and most technologically advanced economy, and the one with the greatest impact on everyone else,” Shapiro writes. “But nothing will stop globalization from destroying job security for millions of Americans, along with their European and Japanese counterparts.” By the year 2020, the vast majority of manufacturing jobs will have permanently relocated to the developing world.

Shapiro reminds the reader that China’s economy is more than three times what it was 15 years ago, and he believes that its rapid economic ascension will continue unabated, as China has now become a key trading partner attractive to foreign investors. However, China’s economic growth may be happening too quickly. The rest of the country is struggling to keep up with the changes, including implementing key environmental and product safety regulations. Also, the vast majority of the workers who contribute to the growing economy remain greatly impoverished. Due to these struggles, China’s economic success is not guaranteed. Shapiro argues that China needs a more liberal political system to manage its liberalized economic system—conditions that are already in place in the United States. Shapiro also disagrees with the view that India will soon emerge as an economic force, and labels India “still a backward economy decades away from global economic influence.”

Longer Lives, Smaller Families

In addition to globalization, Shapiro also notes that an unprecedented shift from large families with short life-spans to small families with significantly longer life-spans is currently taking place across the globe. In Japan, “the median age will hit fifty by 2020.” Population change is something that can’t be legislated or regulated, Shapiro argues, and the economic ramifications of the shift will be felt everywhere. Labor forces will contract and economic growth will be stymied, the vast number of retirees will create a financial crisis for government pension programs in virtually every country that has them, the standard of living will drop, and taxes will increase sharply. The global health-care crisis will inevitably extend to China, where approximately 80% lack medical care: “For the nearly 80% of Chinese without insurance or the private means to pay, doctors won’t see them and hospitals won’t admit them, regardless of how sick or injured they are.” New technologies will only drive up the cost of medical care, which “inevitably will create enormous social and economic stresses in every major country over the next ten to fifteen years,” Shapiro writes.

While the U.S. will likely remain the dominant superpower with no direct challengers, Shapiro finds that the threat of terrorism is one of two wild cards that have the potential to unpredictably alter the projected future outcome. He analyzes what effects different terrorism scenarios might have on the new global economy before briefly identifying different means of technological advancement (the other wild card), including nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technologies, and their effect on the market as well.

The passages discussing climate change expose the one major weakness of the book, however, for Shapiro doesn’t devote much of his powerful analytic skills to an in-depth discussion of the impact of global warming. Instead, he optimistically foresees nanotechnological breakthroughs leading to clean energy, making climate change a “manageable problem,” without elaborating much on what that implies. The topic requires more thoughtful analysis.

Shapiro’s writing style lacks the colloquial, hand-on-your-shoulder approach of award-winning journalists who have tackled similar subject matter, but when he delves into the specifics of the new global economy, his prose is engaging, and infused with real energy. At times repetitive, Futurecast would be more effective if it were more concise, but it succeeds in giving the reader a sophisticated awareness of many of the major challenges and unexpected developments in store for us within the next 15 years.