"Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini was nicknamed "Dr. Doom," until his prediction of the 2008 housing crisis and Great Recession came true--when it was too late. Now he is back with a much scarier prediction, one that we ignore at our peril. There are no fewer than ten overlapping, interconnected threats that are so serious, he calls them Megathreats. From the worst debt crisis the world has ever seen, to governments pumping out too much money, to borders that are blocked to workers and to many shipments of goods, to the rise of a new superpower competition between China and the U.S., to climate change that strikes directly at our most populated cities, we are facing not one, not two, but ten causes of disaster. There is a slight chance we can avoid them, if we come to our senses--but we must act now." --

Social analysts Alvin and Heidi Toffler turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. This book is about how tomorrow's wealth will be created, and who will get it and how. But 21st-century wealth, they argue, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics. They write about everything from education and child rearing to Hollywood and China, from everyday truth and misconceptions to what they call our "third job"--the unnoticed work we do without pay for some of the biggest corporations. In earlier work, they coined the word "prosumer" for people who consume what they themselves produce. Here they expand the concept to reveal how many of our activities--parenting, volunteering, blogging, painting our house, improving our diet, organizing a neighborhood council--pump "free lunch" from the "hidden" non-money economy into the money economy that economists track.--From publisher description.

Midway through the eighteenth century, the rate of growth for the world's population was roughly at zero. Immediately after World War II, it was just above 2 percent. Ever since, it has fallen steadily. This new book, the latest offering from a distinguished expert on international economics, tells readers what this stagnation or fall in population will mean--economically, politically, and historically--for the nations of the world. W. W. Rostow not only traces the whole global arc of this "great population spike"--he looks far beyond it. What he sees will interest anyone curious about what is in store for the world's financial and governmental systems. The Great Population Spike and After: Reflections on the 21st Century contends that, as the decline in population now occurring in the industrialized world spreads to all of the presently developing countries, the global rate of population will fall to the "zero" level circa 2100. (Indeed, with the exception of Africa south of the Sahara, it could reach "zero" long before then.) This being so, how will it be possible to maintain full employment and social services with a decelerating population? What will societies do when the proportion of the working force (as now defined) diminishes radically in relation to the population of poor or elderly dependents? How will the countries of the world confront subsequent decreases in population-related investment? In answering these queries, this bold study asserts that the United States is not the "last remaining superpower" but the "critical margin" without whose support no constructive action on the world scene can succeed. Rostow takes the view that world peace will depend on our government's ability to assume responsibly this "critical margin" role. Further, he argues that, over a period of time, the execution of this strategy on the international scene will require a bipartisan, relentless effort to solve the combustible social problems that weaken not only our cities but our whole society.