Remarkable Reading #45: The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place by Roger Bootle and An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen
The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.
Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself and belong directly to the author. The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.
Two trends we will be touching on here are:
1) Further economic trends within Europe (carrying on further from here and here).
2) Further economic trends within India (carrying on further from here, here and here).
Roger Bootle's The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place is a spectacularly exhaustive book that is precise and specific in explaning and detailing why the EU is not currently working the way it is, what would take its place, what Europe needs to do in order to reinvent itself, what is working within Europe, and what needs further repositioning, restablishing, reordering, reaffirming or reinventing.
Roger Bootle has a direct, forceful, factual, blunt and stimulating writing style that is meticulous and complete in its writing style and has been comprehensively researched. This book was written in 2014 (before Brexit happened in 2016), however the magnificent detail Bootle goes into in terms of explaning and articulating all the finer nuances of thinking that goes into the decision-making process, the detail with that Bootle closely examines Europe including countries such as France, Germany, Swiss, Poland, Ukraine, Netherlands, Italy and Greece for example, and the wider political and economic implications this has on US and the UK.
The concise care that needs to go into understanding the implications of Brexit is what ensues that The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place is a must-read even after Brexit has taken place.
Roger Bootle hovers between detailed history, precision insight into contemporary modernistic times, and a positive outlook on the future. Absolutely gifted, sophisticated and very talented writer who's passion stands-out, Roger Bootle is a writer who's consecutive books I highly anticipate. Undeniably one of the most fascinating commentators on not only Europe, but the wider world economic outlook, The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place should definetly be read by businesspeople who are wanting to expand in to Europe in 2018 and beyond.
I have yet to visit Europe, but it has been a region of the world that has always enthralled & intrigued me in terms of its customs, traditions, lifestyle, exports, entertainment and business focus.
Top Take-out's include:
Page 1 - Introduction: The Trouble with Europe
" It seems clear to me that European integration is the great issue of our day and that so many other issues hand on its outcome. That is why I felt I had to write this book.
My perspective is that of an economiist and a British one at that"
Page 16 - "Human history is dominated by the doings of people who, for good or ill, beliecve in something other than themselves. Such a belief brings strength, endurance and determination"
Page 18 - "The second key idea was the sense that Europe had been falsely divided for centuries. It was eminently plausible to imagine that Europe's historical destiny was to be reunited."
Page 26 - "Winston Churchill had successfully constructed the narrative of the two great Atlantic democracies, America and Britain, fighting the war together and then together laying the foundations of the postwar world, sustained by fellow feeling, common language, and a shared heritage - as well as mutual advantage"
Page 33 - "By contrast, the United States had begun life as a British colony and benefited from British informal institutions, which permitted complex impersonal exchange"
Page 34 - "What is the point of the EU? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are geographically close together? Is it to link together countries that conduct themselves in a certain way and are prepared and able to obey EU law? Or is it simply to carry on expanding as far as it can, because bigger is better, so that the EU can be regarded as an early progenitor of global government"?
Page 36 - "More serious issues concern two countries that are not yet even in the line-up of potential candidates, but ultimately could be, namely Ukraine and Russia. These countries can be regarded as part-European, but they have also been outside mainstream European political culture for some time and cannot be regarded as full western democracies governed by the rule of law (although that has not stopped Russia being included in the G-8). Morever, they are both very large. Ukraine has a population of about 45 million and Russia over 140 million"
Page 54 - "Among the smaller Eu members there have also been significant shifts of opinion compared to when countries first joined. The Netherlands has traditionally been among the most enthusiastic of EU members, but there were always limits to how far people wanted integration to go."
Page 60 - "To the casual observer, it may seem obvious that the EU has been successful. After all, it is the world's largest economy, and trading bloc. It accounts for almost 30% of global output, 15% of trade in goods and about 24% of overall global trade".
"What is more, its people are prosperous, with standards of living that their parents and grandparents could only dream about. On the face of it, the average European citizen has all the trappings of material success - as well as generous social benefits and ample leisure to boot"
Page 76 - "The answer is that it all depends. One of the oldest percepts in economics is the importance of scale. Eighteenth-century ecoonomist Adam Smith emphasized the division of labour as the source of prosperity. The more specialized production was, the more producers would gain expertise. Also also argued that the extent of division of labour was limited by the size of the market. Accordingly, international trade was a huge driver of increased prosperity because it permitted increased specialization"
Page 84 - "Interestingly, the era when Europe was strongest and most prosperous compared to the rest of the world was a period when it was divided into small states, which competed vigorously with one another. The great explorers set forth not from a united Europe, but from Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, France and the various city states of Italy including Genoa, Venice and Milan. "
Page 115 - "France has made a very large bet on its relationship with Germany and their joint construction of monetary union. While the euro may have been a French diplomatic triumph, in economic terms it has worked in favour of Germany"
Page 122 - "In the outside world, China's population is projected to fall from 2031 onward, but in India and the US numbers are projected to carry on rising. For the world as a while, there are projected to be about 2 1/2 billion more people in 2050 than there were in 2010. Accordingly, the EU's share of the world's population is projected to fall from 7.3% to 5.4%"
Page 129 - "First, the population of EU is about 500 m illion people, with an electorate of just over 400 million, compared to a population of 312 million and an electorate of 240 million for the United States. This would make the United States of Europe the world's second largest democracy, behind India, which has a population of about 1.2 billion people, and an electorate of about 740 million"
Page 161 - "After all, the United States, China, Japan, India, and a host of other countries manage to export successfully to the EU without being part of the Single Market"
Page 167 - "There is no doubt that the City of London is a success story on a global scale. It is not surprising, therefore, that it makes a significant contribution to the UK's economy. According to the City of London Corporation, in 2012 the City's contribution to the UK's total national income (gross value added) was 3.7%"
India is a grandiose and striking country with a very detailed and rich history, gigantic opportunities, very complex and detailed linguistics and lifestyle, as well as strong economic potential. It is a country I have visited over 5 times so far and have learnt something new each time. While on one hand it is a success story of economic growth and poverty in decline, but on the other end population, poverty and pollution continue to be pertinent and pressing issues in India. As the next billionth to enter the Net continue to connect from India, as well as neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and South East Asia, how and what the decisions India makes impact the wider world & global economy, and what the spending power and surplus of over 1 billion people in India between 2017-2050 and beyond (ecspecially as China has quickly risen to the world's second largest Superpower) and making sense of such a diverse and variegated country is what makes An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen so thoroughly interesting and riveting. On one end, India continues to strengthen it's local and global (or as I coined it, GLOCAL) positioining whether its presence in Cinema & Television, technlogy & innovation start-ups, importing and exporting of common goods to the world or assisting with solving complex world issues, and on the other hand it faces the problem of solving day to day issues such as food, water, power, electricity and basic living amenities.
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen is an economic book that has exhaustive knowledge and understanding of history, is commandingly and majestically written in terms of providing a comprehensive analysis of the India economy and it's place in the wider world economy.
Writer Amartya Sen (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998) teamed with experienced expert Jean Drèze craft a superbly insightful, compulsive and intriguing book about the potential and contradictions of India.
Amartya Sen's vast and experienced knowledge of India, its systems, its style, its modus operandi, its strengths and its weaknesses, combined with Jean Drèze's energized experience and future-focused vision is what ensures that An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions is a compelling and very useful book for those wishing to understand India. Much like The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place , its the hovering between history, past and potential future that makes An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions an educative and enthralling read.
Preface, Viii: "However, the achievement of high growth - even high lkevels of sustainable growth - must ultimately be judged in terms of the impact of that economic growth on the lives and fredoms of the people. Over this period of rapid growth, while some people, particularly among the privileged classes, have done very well, many more continue to lead unecessarily deprived and precarious lives"
Preface X: "This two-way relationship has been a central feature of the so-called 'Asian economic development', begining with Japan immediately after the Meiji restoration, extending gradually to South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and elsewhere, and ultimately making China the world leader both in raising economic growth and in expanding human capability"
Page 7 - "India can be proud of its huge circulation of newspapers (the largest in the world), and a vast and lively stream of radio and television coverage, presenting - among other things - many different analyses of ongoing politics (many of them round the clock). This is surely something of a triumph of democratic opportunity - at one level - that adds much force to the working of other democratic institutions, including free, multi-party elections"
Page 12 - "Not only is access to the Internet and world opinion uncensored and unrestricted in India, there is a vast multitude of media presenting widely different points of view, often very critical of the government in office"
Page 97 - "Other technological and social innovations, including the rapid spread of information tecnology and (in some states) the institutionalization of social audits, have also consolidated this trend toward transparency. Here again, there are significant achievements as well as an enormous scope for further gains"
Page 101 - "An important challenge is to harness these new technologies for social purposes and not just private gain (as they are widely deployed already).
Page 107 - "In a powerful diagnosis Rabindranath Tagore said: 'in my view the imposing tower of mistery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. The remark is somewhat extreme, in separating out just one factor among many problems that India faces. Yet Tagore offers a judgement that is deeply insightful.
The role of basic eeducation in the process of development and social progress is very wide and critically impoortant. First, the capability to read and write and count has powerful effects on our quality of life: the freedoms we have to understand the world, to lead an informed life, to communicate with others, and to be generally in touch with what is going on. In a society, particularly in the moderm world, where so much depends on the written medium, being illiterate is like being imprisoned...."
Page 111 - "Later on, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and of course, China followed similar routes and firmly focused on basic education, largely deliverfed by the state. In explaning the rapid economic progress of East Asia, its willingness to make good use of the global market economy is often and rightly emphasized."
Page 124 - "The top five also include Hong Kong and Singapore. What India seems to suffer from is not a problem of being excluded from the West, or one arising from a cultural problem of being in Asia rathher than Europe or America; it is specifically an Indian - and South Asian - failure to benefit from the insight about the role of quality education that has informed the development experiences of much oif Asia, Europe and America"
Page 181 - "Democracy gives India the freedom to learn from any country in the world, and there are excellent reasons for us to make much greater use of informed reasoning in the practice of democracy, rather than or being stuck in the hole in which we have placed ourselves, in the absence of systematic reasoning about the most importance necessity of the people"
Page 262 - "India is estimated to have some 86,000 newspapera and periodicals, with a circulation of most than 370 million - significantly more than any other country in the world. It is also a country in which newspapers are growing in number and in circulation, in contrast with the worldwide trends of decreasing newspaper circulation and revenue"
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen and The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place by Roger Bootle are books to read if you want to understand the wider economic implications that impact the global economy in the 21st Century. The strength of both books is in it's thoroughly exhaustive research, the combination of spectacular story-telling and factoids fused with hard quantitative data and in the enrapturing, fascinating and charming countries, their respective flaws, and their future opportunities.
You can follow Roger Bootle on Twitter here, visit the Capital Economics website here, visit his biography page here, and purchase a copy of The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place here.
You can purchase a copy of An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions here, follow Amartya Sen on Twitter here, and visit his Wikipedia page here.
You can visit Jean Drèze's Wikipedia page here, visit his biography on the IGC (International Growth Centre page here), and read his blog here.
Thank you,
Praz aka Prashant
Two trends we will be touching on here are:
1) Further economic trends within Europe (carrying on further from here and here).
2) Further economic trends within India (carrying on further from here, here and here).
Roger Bootle's The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place is a spectacularly exhaustive book that is precise and specific in explaning and detailing why the EU is not currently working the way it is, what would take its place, what Europe needs to do in order to reinvent itself, what is working within Europe, and what needs further repositioning, restablishing, reordering, reaffirming or reinventing.
Roger Bootle has a direct, forceful, factual, blunt and stimulating writing style that is meticulous and complete in its writing style and has been comprehensively researched. This book was written in 2014 (before Brexit happened in 2016), however the magnificent detail Bootle goes into in terms of explaning and articulating all the finer nuances of thinking that goes into the decision-making process, the detail with that Bootle closely examines Europe including countries such as France, Germany, Swiss, Poland, Ukraine, Netherlands, Italy and Greece for example, and the wider political and economic implications this has on US and the UK.
The concise care that needs to go into understanding the implications of Brexit is what ensues that The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place is a must-read even after Brexit has taken place.
Roger Bootle hovers between detailed history, precision insight into contemporary modernistic times, and a positive outlook on the future. Absolutely gifted, sophisticated and very talented writer who's passion stands-out, Roger Bootle is a writer who's consecutive books I highly anticipate. Undeniably one of the most fascinating commentators on not only Europe, but the wider world economic outlook, The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place should definetly be read by businesspeople who are wanting to expand in to Europe in 2018 and beyond.
I have yet to visit Europe, but it has been a region of the world that has always enthralled & intrigued me in terms of its customs, traditions, lifestyle, exports, entertainment and business focus.
Top Take-out's include:
Page 1 - Introduction: The Trouble with Europe
" It seems clear to me that European integration is the great issue of our day and that so many other issues hand on its outcome. That is why I felt I had to write this book.
My perspective is that of an economiist and a British one at that"
Page 16 - "Human history is dominated by the doings of people who, for good or ill, beliecve in something other than themselves. Such a belief brings strength, endurance and determination"
Page 18 - "The second key idea was the sense that Europe had been falsely divided for centuries. It was eminently plausible to imagine that Europe's historical destiny was to be reunited."
Page 26 - "Winston Churchill had successfully constructed the narrative of the two great Atlantic democracies, America and Britain, fighting the war together and then together laying the foundations of the postwar world, sustained by fellow feeling, common language, and a shared heritage - as well as mutual advantage"
Page 33 - "By contrast, the United States had begun life as a British colony and benefited from British informal institutions, which permitted complex impersonal exchange"
Page 34 - "What is the point of the EU? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are geographically close together? Is it to link together countries that conduct themselves in a certain way and are prepared and able to obey EU law? Or is it simply to carry on expanding as far as it can, because bigger is better, so that the EU can be regarded as an early progenitor of global government"?
Page 36 - "More serious issues concern two countries that are not yet even in the line-up of potential candidates, but ultimately could be, namely Ukraine and Russia. These countries can be regarded as part-European, but they have also been outside mainstream European political culture for some time and cannot be regarded as full western democracies governed by the rule of law (although that has not stopped Russia being included in the G-8). Morever, they are both very large. Ukraine has a population of about 45 million and Russia over 140 million"
Page 54 - "Among the smaller Eu members there have also been significant shifts of opinion compared to when countries first joined. The Netherlands has traditionally been among the most enthusiastic of EU members, but there were always limits to how far people wanted integration to go."
Page 60 - "To the casual observer, it may seem obvious that the EU has been successful. After all, it is the world's largest economy, and trading bloc. It accounts for almost 30% of global output, 15% of trade in goods and about 24% of overall global trade".
"What is more, its people are prosperous, with standards of living that their parents and grandparents could only dream about. On the face of it, the average European citizen has all the trappings of material success - as well as generous social benefits and ample leisure to boot"
Page 76 - "The answer is that it all depends. One of the oldest percepts in economics is the importance of scale. Eighteenth-century ecoonomist Adam Smith emphasized the division of labour as the source of prosperity. The more specialized production was, the more producers would gain expertise. Also also argued that the extent of division of labour was limited by the size of the market. Accordingly, international trade was a huge driver of increased prosperity because it permitted increased specialization"
Page 84 - "Interestingly, the era when Europe was strongest and most prosperous compared to the rest of the world was a period when it was divided into small states, which competed vigorously with one another. The great explorers set forth not from a united Europe, but from Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, France and the various city states of Italy including Genoa, Venice and Milan. "
Page 115 - "France has made a very large bet on its relationship with Germany and their joint construction of monetary union. While the euro may have been a French diplomatic triumph, in economic terms it has worked in favour of Germany"
Page 122 - "In the outside world, China's population is projected to fall from 2031 onward, but in India and the US numbers are projected to carry on rising. For the world as a while, there are projected to be about 2 1/2 billion more people in 2050 than there were in 2010. Accordingly, the EU's share of the world's population is projected to fall from 7.3% to 5.4%"
Page 129 - "First, the population of EU is about 500 m illion people, with an electorate of just over 400 million, compared to a population of 312 million and an electorate of 240 million for the United States. This would make the United States of Europe the world's second largest democracy, behind India, which has a population of about 1.2 billion people, and an electorate of about 740 million"
Page 161 - "After all, the United States, China, Japan, India, and a host of other countries manage to export successfully to the EU without being part of the Single Market"
Page 167 - "There is no doubt that the City of London is a success story on a global scale. It is not surprising, therefore, that it makes a significant contribution to the UK's economy. According to the City of London Corporation, in 2012 the City's contribution to the UK's total national income (gross value added) was 3.7%"
India is a grandiose and striking country with a very detailed and rich history, gigantic opportunities, very complex and detailed linguistics and lifestyle, as well as strong economic potential. It is a country I have visited over 5 times so far and have learnt something new each time. While on one hand it is a success story of economic growth and poverty in decline, but on the other end population, poverty and pollution continue to be pertinent and pressing issues in India. As the next billionth to enter the Net continue to connect from India, as well as neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and South East Asia, how and what the decisions India makes impact the wider world & global economy, and what the spending power and surplus of over 1 billion people in India between 2017-2050 and beyond (ecspecially as China has quickly risen to the world's second largest Superpower) and making sense of such a diverse and variegated country is what makes An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen so thoroughly interesting and riveting. On one end, India continues to strengthen it's local and global (or as I coined it, GLOCAL) positioining whether its presence in Cinema & Television, technlogy & innovation start-ups, importing and exporting of common goods to the world or assisting with solving complex world issues, and on the other hand it faces the problem of solving day to day issues such as food, water, power, electricity and basic living amenities.
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen is an economic book that has exhaustive knowledge and understanding of history, is commandingly and majestically written in terms of providing a comprehensive analysis of the India economy and it's place in the wider world economy.
Writer Amartya Sen (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998) teamed with experienced expert Jean Drèze craft a superbly insightful, compulsive and intriguing book about the potential and contradictions of India.
Amartya Sen's vast and experienced knowledge of India, its systems, its style, its modus operandi, its strengths and its weaknesses, combined with Jean Drèze's energized experience and future-focused vision is what ensures that An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions is a compelling and very useful book for those wishing to understand India. Much like The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place , its the hovering between history, past and potential future that makes An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions an educative and enthralling read.
Preface, Viii: "However, the achievement of high growth - even high lkevels of sustainable growth - must ultimately be judged in terms of the impact of that economic growth on the lives and fredoms of the people. Over this period of rapid growth, while some people, particularly among the privileged classes, have done very well, many more continue to lead unecessarily deprived and precarious lives"
Preface X: "This two-way relationship has been a central feature of the so-called 'Asian economic development', begining with Japan immediately after the Meiji restoration, extending gradually to South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and elsewhere, and ultimately making China the world leader both in raising economic growth and in expanding human capability"
Page 7 - "India can be proud of its huge circulation of newspapers (the largest in the world), and a vast and lively stream of radio and television coverage, presenting - among other things - many different analyses of ongoing politics (many of them round the clock). This is surely something of a triumph of democratic opportunity - at one level - that adds much force to the working of other democratic institutions, including free, multi-party elections"
Page 12 - "Not only is access to the Internet and world opinion uncensored and unrestricted in India, there is a vast multitude of media presenting widely different points of view, often very critical of the government in office"
Page 97 - "Other technological and social innovations, including the rapid spread of information tecnology and (in some states) the institutionalization of social audits, have also consolidated this trend toward transparency. Here again, there are significant achievements as well as an enormous scope for further gains"
Page 101 - "An important challenge is to harness these new technologies for social purposes and not just private gain (as they are widely deployed already).
Page 107 - "In a powerful diagnosis Rabindranath Tagore said: 'in my view the imposing tower of mistery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. The remark is somewhat extreme, in separating out just one factor among many problems that India faces. Yet Tagore offers a judgement that is deeply insightful.
The role of basic eeducation in the process of development and social progress is very wide and critically impoortant. First, the capability to read and write and count has powerful effects on our quality of life: the freedoms we have to understand the world, to lead an informed life, to communicate with others, and to be generally in touch with what is going on. In a society, particularly in the moderm world, where so much depends on the written medium, being illiterate is like being imprisoned...."
Page 111 - "Later on, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and of course, China followed similar routes and firmly focused on basic education, largely deliverfed by the state. In explaning the rapid economic progress of East Asia, its willingness to make good use of the global market economy is often and rightly emphasized."
Page 124 - "The top five also include Hong Kong and Singapore. What India seems to suffer from is not a problem of being excluded from the West, or one arising from a cultural problem of being in Asia rathher than Europe or America; it is specifically an Indian - and South Asian - failure to benefit from the insight about the role of quality education that has informed the development experiences of much oif Asia, Europe and America"
Page 181 - "Democracy gives India the freedom to learn from any country in the world, and there are excellent reasons for us to make much greater use of informed reasoning in the practice of democracy, rather than or being stuck in the hole in which we have placed ourselves, in the absence of systematic reasoning about the most importance necessity of the people"
Page 262 - "India is estimated to have some 86,000 newspapera and periodicals, with a circulation of most than 370 million - significantly more than any other country in the world. It is also a country in which newspapers are growing in number and in circulation, in contrast with the worldwide trends of decreasing newspaper circulation and revenue"
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen and The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place by Roger Bootle are books to read if you want to understand the wider economic implications that impact the global economy in the 21st Century. The strength of both books is in it's thoroughly exhaustive research, the combination of spectacular story-telling and factoids fused with hard quantitative data and in the enrapturing, fascinating and charming countries, their respective flaws, and their future opportunities.
You can follow Roger Bootle on Twitter here, visit the Capital Economics website here, visit his biography page here, and purchase a copy of The Trouble with Europe: Why the EU isn't Working, How It Can be Reformed, What Could Take its Place here.
You can purchase a copy of An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions here, follow Amartya Sen on Twitter here, and visit his Wikipedia page here.
You can visit Jean Drèze's Wikipedia page here, visit his biography on the IGC (International Growth Centre page here), and read his blog here.
Thank you,
Praz aka Prashant
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