Brazil Is the New America How Brazil Offers Upward Mobility in a Collapsing World

by Davidson, James Dale

• ISBN13: 9781118006634
• ISBN10: 1118006631
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-07
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

The US faces its greatest solvency crisis ever with unfunded Medicare, Social Security along with threats to the stock market and diminishing wealth in the US. Steadily falling income in the US is another concern. According to the author, people need to get off the "sinking ship" and go to Brazil. Unlike the US economy, the economic situation in Brazil is still quite strong, in part because the consumer economy is relatively non-leveraged. Per capital GDP in Brazil has more than doubled over the past ten years. Cost structure of employment is generally lower than in the US. Brazilians are uneasy about debt and many people there wouldn't think of buying a home unless they can pay for it in cash.

Author Biography

James Dale Davidson is a successful entrepreneur who edits Strategic Investment. A cofounder, with Bill Bonner, of Agora Inc. and a cofounder of the media outlet Newsmax.com, Mr. Davidson is the author of five books. He defied conventional wisdom to forecast the Japanese stock market crash of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xv
The World in 2050	p. 1
A Preview of the Future	p. 2
A Decrease in Productive Capacity	p. 5
Squandering Prosperity	p. 9
The Original America Is the New Brazil	p. 11
The Country of the Future	p. 14
The Origins of America	p. 20
The Mythic Brazil	p. 24
A Difficult Dream to Realize	p. 26
Can America's Destiny Be Fulfilled in Brazil?	p. 28
How Brazil Became Endowed for Prosperity in a Collapsing World	p. 35
The Impact of Topography	p. 36
Yesterday's Limitations as Today's Strengths	p. 45
Three Radical Changes	p. 53
Predatory Government
Growth Imperatives Lead to Fiat Money and Runaway Debt
Energy Surges Alter Spatial Configurations of Economies
Prosperity and Energy Density: The Hidden Role of BTUs in the Rise and Fall of Economies	p. 67
Denser Energy Equals a Rise in Prosperity	p. 68
Coal and Adam Smith	p. 69
Going Forward or Backward?
The Phases of Extracting Energy	p. 73
An Abundance of Wood
An Abundance of Coal
The Original Petroleum Industry
The Shift from Coal to Oil and World War I	p. 75
Peak Oil and Declining Money	p. 79
Declining Energy and Systemic Collapse
The Real Symptoms of Peak Oil
The Competition for Prosperity	p. 84
Expensive Oil Remains
A 665,000 Percent Increase in the Price of a BTU?
The SS Great Britain Sails Again	p. 87
"Yes! We Have No Bananas"
Malthus Again: Population Pressures, Global Cooling, and the Coming Dark Age	p. 91
The Dynamics of Weather	p. 93
Not Wrong, but Early	p. 96
Waiting for Our Malthusian Moment	p. 100
The Next Little Ice Age	p. 104
"The Dog That Did Not Bark"	p. 114
Putting Two and Two Together	p. 117
A New Maunder Minimum	p. 124
Dearth, Insanity, and Revolution	p. 125
Deficit Attention Disorder: How the Perverse Logic of Debtism Promotes the Illusion of Democratic Consensus but Devastates the Economy	p. 131
How Debtism Changed the World	p. 132
Debtism Helps Politicians Manipulate You	p. 142
The U.S. Budget Deficits Would Make Greece Blush	p. 144
Worse than the Great Depression	p. 149
The Collapse of the Boom	p. 156
"Rome" Falls, Again: Economic Closure and Financial Repression as the United States Faces Bankruptcy	p. 159
Slip-Sliding Down the Road to National Insolvency	p. 160
The Destruction of the Middle Class
Pre-Industrial Growth Rates
Are You Ready for Taxes to Double?
Welcome to the Second Decline and Fall of "Rome"	p. 167
The New Berlin Wall
Americans as the New Illegal Emigrants	p. 172
The Sunny Side of the Leverage Cycle: How Brazil's Legacy of Hyperinflation Prepared It to Prosper in a Post-Dollar World	p. 175
You Are in Steerage on a Sinking Ship	p. 178
Stopping Runaway Spending	p. 181
Important Lessons from Hyperinflation	p. 185
Minimal Bank Capital Ratios: A Crisis Waiting to Happen
U.S. Reserve Requirements: A System Failure
The Political Roots of the Economic Crisis
How Brazilians Became the New Scots
Crash-Proofing the System Brazilian Style
America's $104 Trillion Problem
Brazil and the Taylor Rule
Leverage and Growth	p. 195
GDP Gains Based on Income Growth	p. 196
A Bounty of Water and Land: Brazil as History's First Tropical Superpower	p. 199
Brazil and Water	p. 199
Sustainability
A World of Water Shortages
Renewable Water
Brazil Reinvents Agriculture	p. 206
The New Breadbasket of the World
Diversification
Irrigation
A History of Small and Large Farms
A Stunning Increase
Reversing the Gap: Brazil as the World's Emerging Energy Superpower	p. 221
The Zero Sum Growth Game	p. 222
Grim Prospects	p. 226
Pulling the Plug	p. 228
Submerging Economies	p. 231
Rio Is the New Houston	p. 233
Leading the Way in Renewable Energy	p. 238
Let There Be Light	p. 242
Declining Power after an Energy Transition	p. 244
Demographic Turbocharge: Brazil's Coming Decades of Miracle Growth	p. 247
China Takes a Dive?	p. 251
Brazil's Demographic Bonus	p. 253
A Laboratory for New Products	p. 257
A Real Cultural Melting Pot	p. 258
Back to the Future: What Could Go Wrong	p. 261
Is Brazil Following the United States Too Closely?	p. 262
Weight	p. 264
Effects on Health Care	p. 268
Diversity Issues	p. 270
Infrastructure	p. 274
Corruption	p. 277
Bureaucracy	p. 278
Custo Brasil	p. 281
Credit	p. 284
On the Outside Looking In: Making the Move toward Prosperity	p. 289
Conclusions	p. 290
Healthcare
Education
Military
"Plagiarize, Plagiarize, Why Not Use Your Eyes?"	p. 298
Coming Soon: Financial Repression	p. 299
"Revocation or Denial of Passport in Case of Certain Unpaid Taxes"
From the Empire Settlement Act to Unsettling Choices	p. 302
Looking at BRICs	p. 304
Untapped Resources
Climate: Brazil Stays Warm in the Little Ice Age
U.S. Farmers Lead the Migration to Brazil
Making the Move	p. 308
About the Author	p. 311
Index	p. 313
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