Fareed Zakaria, author of "The Post-American World -The Rise of the Rest" has been telling it like it is about the resurgence of the non-Western world.
In Los Angeles this week, he again laid out his thesis on the "inconvenient truth," about why America needs to change and to reform from within before it is too late. The signs of America's decline is everywhere.
Mr. Zakaria posits the declining system of education and decaying infrastructure, and worse, its political gridlock. Click on the story below:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-et-zakaria23-2008may23,0,7142427.story
Regarding California (crumbling from within with broken and decaying infrastructures, fiscally broke with a US$ 14 billion to $ 20 billion budget deficit shortfall for fiscal year 2008-2009), Zakaria said:
"When I was growing up in India," he said, "we looked to California to see what the future is going to look like, to see the most interesting trends and innovations. [The state had] the extraordinary ability . . . to provide a kind of broad measure of prosperity to all its citizens. It had the best education system from kindergarten through post-graduate. It had a great system of highways, great parks."
Now he calls California "a basket case." He said its "fiscal balance sheet is fraudulent because it has not taken into account the massive pension liabilities of all state workers. It has not built a new campus in decades; meanwhile, it has built new prisons. The education system is collapsing. . . ."If we want to succeed and thrive in a Post-American world," he said, "rather than blaming foreigners -- in the California case, blaming Mexicans -- we should get our own house in order."
How true indeed, Zacharia is telling it like it is about the "Inconvenient Truth" that many Americans are in denial about.
Click on Amazon.com on Mr. Zakaria's book, "The Post-American World - the Rise of the Rest"...
http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/039306235X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211597378&sr=8-1
