It’s all well and good to be optimistic about how technology will save us after the decade or more of suffering caused by the worldwide debt bubble, if only it were true.  Perhaps, as an economist, you do not feel the need to notice that Greenland’s Ice Sheet is melting, that the north pole is nearly free of ice in the summer, that the Midwest is suffering with more tornadoes, that Texas has had the worst drought since the Great Depression, that islands in the South Pacific are being covered by the ocean and that the course of the jet stream has changed.  Are these issues not relevant to the world economy of the future?  Or are you so optimistic that you believe that we have not passed the “tipping point” and rapid adoption of electric cars, solar energy, wind power, and nuclear energy will save us all?  I’m afraid that the Hollywood happy ending you paint, hopefully not just to sell books, is unlikely to occur.

Moreover, there is an ethical issue which is inextricably tied to the economy that also is not addressed.  As you probably know, the U.S. now has the greatest income disparity since the Great Depression.  It seems to me that this is not entirely coincidental.  This kind of income disparity is both politically and economically perilous.  It goes directly to the issue you bring up of austerity fatigue.  How much harder will it be, for a government that encourages investment bankers and CEOs to earn outsized salaries even when their contribution to profits has been negative, to tell average middle class people that they should do all the suffering?

You propose, in your book, an increase of 2.5 cents a month as a gasoline tax to be invested directly in infrastructure.  As a new tax it is subject to exactly the same formula you apply to any taxes and, as such, it can be argued it crowds out private investment capital (even if, in the long run - when we’re all dead, it improves a facility that private capital depends upon).  Once you have crossed the Rubicon by suggesting public works through taxation (on the theory that gasoline use will decline) you ought to look at other alternatives.  Firstly, a gas tax is regressive and hits the poor and lower middle class hardest.  Moreover, they may not be able to afford an electric car or even a hybrid.  The high income investment bankers and CEOs, the 1% if you will, can afford it.  Moreover, their ability to save discretionary income has only lead to asset inflation and not new jobs.  Even David Stockman would tell you “trickle down” economics has been discredited.  So why recommend taxation of gasoline, whose demand is inelastic at the most basic levels of use, and penalize the poor.  Have you been living in Texas for too long to have any compassion for the poor and middle class who have made no progress against inflation in the last 30 years?  Argue, if you will, that taxes are an ineffective method of income redistribution and job creation by the private sector is better than that of the public sector.  But this argument does nothing to staunch the excesses that have caused the concentration of wealth in the first place.  And the private sector is sending its jobs overseas, except for small start up companies.  This is how our manufacturing sector has been decimated since the 1970s.  This is how highly paid jobs were lost even when they went to countries that unfairly subsidize their industries, or pollute their water, or foul the air, or hire 13 year old girls sold by their parents.  Are these the private companies that deserve our thanks for creating low priced WalMart stores in exchange for high unemployment and low wage jobs for the middle class?

If you have not done so already, I urge you to read an article from The Atlantic. Volume 272 No 6, of December 1993, by James Fallows entitled “How the World Works”.  This illuminating article, well before its time, uncovers the fallacy of free trade.  It was written more than a decade before “The Globalization Paradox” which you will, perhaps, be more familiar with.

I would hope, in a country whose political future depends on a fair and equitable system, that you would consider looking at the larger picture.  People accept suffering to an enormous extent during wars, especially when there is universal conscription and the war is clearly necessary to our survival.  They will also accept economic hardship if the game isn’t rigged.  Maybe a future book of yours could address this issue.