Do you ever throw down your newspaper or iPad in disgust after reading the latest news about jobs or budget deficits and fret about the inevitable decline of the United States? Stop worrying, advises Daniel Gross, the economics editor of Yahoo Finance. In his new book, Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline…and the Rise of a New Economy (Simon & Schuster, $26), Gross assures us that our current economic slump is just a temporary setback. We’re not Japan or the British Empire, he says, nor is China quite the juggernaut that it’s cracked up to be, for that matter. Bad things have happened to the U.S. economy many times before, yet it always emerges from the experience, well, better, stronger, and faster.
“Restructuring is a core national competency,” Gross declares, pointing out that the United States rebounded faster from the Great Recession than its peers. Drawing on his extensive travels in the U.S. and abroad, Gross presents much evidence of new green shoots of prosperity.