It's pretty good so far. I don't yet believe that his assertion is true, but to be fair, I've just started the book. But I do like paragraphs like this:
Progress is hard enough to achieve in the world without being perceived as a danger. One of the ironies of the recent success of India and China is the fear that has engulfed the United States that success in these two countries comes at the expense of the United States. These fears are fundamentally wrong, and even worse, dangerous. They are wrong because the world is not a zero-sum struggle, but is rather a positive-sum opportunity in which improving technologies and skills can raise living standards around the world. Not only are the Indian IT workers providing valuable goods and services to United States consumers, but they are also sitting at terminals with Dell computers, using Microsoft and SAP software, Cisco routers, and dozens of other pieces of empowering technology imported from the developed countries. As India's technology grows, its consumers opt for a growing array of US and European goods and services for their homes and businesses.
Not every transaction can be a positive-sum transaction, which is why diversified risk is still risk (as we have know realized, in every sense of that word, from the mortgage banking breakdown) and why I doubt the feasibility of the author's prediction that world poverty can be wiped out by 2025, but it is refreshing to read something thoughtful and optimistic in light of the politically-motivated but thoughtless and depressing diatribe so frequently heard during the election season.
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