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

320 Pages·2012·1.75 MB·English

by  James Dale Davidson

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The World in 2050
A Preview of the Future
A Decrease in Productive Capacity
Squandering Prosperity
Chapter 2: The Original America is the New Brazil
The Country of the Future
The Origins of America
The Mythic Brazil
A Difficult Dream to Realize
Can America’s Destiny Be Fulfilled in Brazil?
Chapter 3: How Brazil Became Endowed for Prosperity
in a Collapsing World
The Impact of Topography
Yesterday’s Limitations as Today’s Strengths
Three Radical Changes
Chapter 4: Prosperity and Energy Density
Denser Energy Equals a Rise in Prosperity
Coal and Adam Smith
The Phases of Extracting Energy
The Shift from Coal to Oil and World War I
Peak Oil and Declining Money
The Competition for Prosperity
The SS Great Britain Sails Again
Chapter 5: Malthus Again
The Dynamics of Weather
Not Wrong, but Early
Waiting for Our Malthusian Moment
The Next Little Ice Age
“The Dog That Did Not Bark”
Putting Two and Two Together
A New Maunder Minimum
Dearth, Insanity, and Revolution
Chapter 6: Deficit Attention Disorder
How Debtism Changed the World
Debtism Helps Politicians Manipulate You
The U.S. Budget Deficits Would Make Greece Blush
Worse than the Great Depression
The Collapse of the Boom
Chapter 7: “Rome” Falls, Again
Slip-Sliding Down the Road to National Insolvency
Welcome to the Second Decline and Fall of “Rome”
Americans as the New Illegal Emigrants
Chapter 8: The Sunny Side of the Leverage Cycle
You Are in Steerage on a Sinking Ship
Stopping Runaway Spending
Important Lessons from Hyperinflation
Leverage and Growth
GDP Gains Based on Income Growth
Chapter 9: A Bounty of Water and Land
Brazil and Water
Brazil Reinvents Agriculture
Chapter 10: Reversing the Gap
The Zero Sum Growth Game
Grim Prospects
Pulling the Plug
Submerging Economies
Rio is the New Houston
Leading the Way in Renewable Energy
Let there Be Light
Declining Power after an Energy Transition
Chapter 11: Demographic Turbocharge
China Takes a Dive?
Brazil’s Demographic Bonus
A Laboratory for New Products
A Real Cultural Melting Pot
Chapter 12: Back to the Future
Is Brazil Following the United States Too Closely?
Weight
Effects on Health Care
Diversity Issues
Infrastructure
Corruption
Bureaucracy
Custo Brasil
Credit
Chapter 13: On the Outside Looking In
Conclusions
“Plagiarize, Plagiarize, Why Not Use Your Eyes?”
Coming Soon: Financial Repression
From the Empire Settlement Act to Unsettling Choices
Looking at BRICs
Making the Move
About the Author
Index

Copyright © 2012 by James Dale Davidson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108
of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written
permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate
per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive,
Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the Web at
www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be
addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River
Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at
http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have
used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or
warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this
book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales
representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained
herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a
professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable
for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited
to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical
support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States
at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax (317) 572-
4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content
that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more
information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Davidson, James Dale.
Brazil is the new America : how Brazil offers upward mobility in a collapsing
world / James Dale Davidson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-00663-4 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-22175-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-
118-26041-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23556-0 (ebk) 1. Economic development—
Brazil. 2. Economic development—United States. 3. Economic forecasting—
Brazil. 4. Economic forecasting—United States. 5. Brazil—Economic conditions
—21st century. 6. United States—Economic conditions—21st century. 7. Brazil
—Social conditions—21st century. 8. United States—Social conditions—21st
century. I. Title.
HC187.D38 2012
330.981—dc23
2012010364
To my Brazilian son, Arthur Leonardo DeClare Davidson
Preface
The first decade of the twenty-first century has taught me a lesson. I now realize
that I was hasty to be cocky half a lifetime ago about having been born in the
United States.
When I was a young man, the American Dream was alive and well. I took
advantage of it to invent my own work as a serial entrepreneur. I have had a
hand in launching and building three billion dollar-plus companies, two
companies that attained a market cap of half a billion dollars or more, and about
a dozen others that became worth $100 million or more. I enjoyed the adventure
and the high standard of living that went with it. But I don’t see the same
opportunities ahead for my children, especially my two older children who are
entirely American as I was.
By no means am I selling them short. They are both bright and energetic. They
will need all the energy they can muster to succeed in the world in which they
will live.
My youngest child has better prospects. He is a Brazilian citizen who speaks
fluent Portuguese and is already learning Mandarin, to go with Spanish, French,
and English in his language repertoire. Touch wood, he seems to have a bright
future as a global citizen, more because his mother’s family includes some well-
connected and successful Brazilians than because of his connections to the
United States.
Most Americans are ignorant of Brazil. Many might be inclined to consider it
an Hispanic country. Or guess that its capital is Buenos Aires. Equally, many
would be inclined to suppose that Brazil is a small, poor country. I remember my
astonishment several years ago when a very wealthy Brazilian woman of my
acquaintance took a fancy to a house in McLean, Virginia, that was for sale by
its owner. When the owner learned that the proposed buyer was Brazilian, he
arrogantly announced that he would take the discussion no further because “a
Brazilian could not possibly afford” his house. What an idiot. Now I live in
South Florida, where newspapers report that up to half of all real property
transactions in Miami in 2011 were conducted with Brazilians for cash.
We Americans believe ourselves to be rich. For our entire lives, we have been
told that the United States is the richest country on earth. Many of us who cast
uneasy glances into the future anticipated that sometime in the by-and-by the
unrealistic promises made to pay Social Security and Medicare benefits would