Jonathan Tepperman doesn’t waste your time in telling you where the problems are. He just goes ahead and lists them down. Problems like inequality, lack of political leadership,policy gridlock, immigration, the resource curse are among them.
Unless and until a country is able to resolve these problems, either all at one go or gradually a country will be consigned to the periphery of the economy. This is a good book due to thetreatment of the subject matter.
Countries become rich or poor due to the priorities they place on economic development. An ardent embrace of capitalist culture, especially motivated by some sense of greed and insecurity to have more of everything, including prosperity and material abundance, ideally evenly distributed across different groups, will be key determinants of a country’s success.
More importantly, Jonathan Tepperman’s “The Fix” presents a very different picture of the economy than is usually presented. The book reveals often-overlooked success stories, offering a provocative, unconventional take on answers to economic issues hiding in plain sight. It identifies ten pervasive and seemingly impossible challenges, including immigration reform, economic stagnation, political gridlock, corruption, and Islamist extremism; and then shows solutions, and not merely hypothetical ones. The value of the book lies in explaining what these solutions are.
More impressively, Tepperman has traveled the world to write this book, conducting more than a hundred interviews with the people behind the policies. Meticulously researched and deeply reported, “The Fix” presents practical advice for problem-solvers of all stripes, and stands as a necessary corrective to the hand-wringing and grim prognostication that dominates the news, making a data-driven case for optimism in a time of crushing pessimism.
The key lies in getting people to talk about the book, rather than to resign their countries or communities to the same old fate of nations. Indeed, it helps to know that the author is now the editor of “Foreign Affairs,” an eminent journal where key issues are debated, often from a US perspective, though not necessarily confined to it.