Briefing note: What went wrong with America? By Freidman and Mandelbaum

That Used to Be Us: What Went Wrong with America? And How it Can Come Back

Who’s it by?

Thomas L Friedman (Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat) and Michael Mandelbaum (Professor of American Foreign Policy at John Hopkins University).

What’s it about?

How America lost its superpower status and what it can do to get it back. 

Friedman and Mandelbaum distil America’s crisis into four main problem areas:

1. Lack of focus since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11.
2. Chronic failure to address problems in education (49% of American adults do not know how long it takes the Earth to revolve round the sun) and energy consumption (dangerously dependent on deficit funding from China and oil from the Middle East).
3. Traditional links between investment, industry and innovation have broken down.