Jeff Rubin

He has some interesting stuff to say and I've never had the downsides of globalization explained so well. But the author makes some startling contradictions. He makes a very interesting point that measuring the success of a country by GDP and number of jobs is irrelevant because GDP only really affects the wealth of the wealthy class and because wages have largely not kept up with inflation. But then he just completely forgets to apply it to his analysis. He seems enamored with the Trump show more administration's commitment to pushing back against free trade agreements. Opposition to free trade agreements isn't purely a Trumpian issue as he points out the similarities between Trump and Sanders. But then for some reason he goes on to praise Trump for trying to bring manufacturing jobs and commercial investment back to the United States by imposing tariffs on China. Which are the very thing he argued earlier isn't a relevant reflection of how well people are doing within a country. The author's support of the Trump administration's policies and tactics begin to wear and agitate as the book goes on. His alignment with Trump does not help his credibility and is the main reason I did not finish this book. If anyone is a GDP and jobs president, it is DJT. Nowhere in Trump's policies does he seek to raise worker's wages or boost the incomes of the middle class. Or build up America's crumbling infrastructure. Isn't that the answer to the problem if the author's own argument about GDP and jobs numbers being irrelevant is true? Who did Trump give the majority of his flagship tax cut to, again? Don't ask Jeff Rubin, he doesn't seem to remember. show less

This is one of the best books I have read that analyzes our current economical woes and predicts what the future will look like when the oil supply dwindles and prices go sky-high (and both will happen for sure, as you will read in the book). And yet the future may look a lot like the past and we will likely regain some of the aspects of the past that we have lost - with smaller village-type communities rather than barren suburbs, more rail and public transit, local foods in our stores show more (hurray!), and jobs returning to North America. Very enlightening and highly recommended! show less

The subtitle says it all: this book is about "oil and the end of globalization". This was definitely an interesting read, and I found it very accessible. Rubin manages to maintain a conversational tone without sounding condescending. I appreciated the fact that while some parts of the book were disturbing (like the description of how the car companies deliberately destroyed public transit), there's a lot of optimism here too. There are aspects of Rubin's predicted future that certainly seem show more like an improvement over the present, like an end to long commutes and a transition to locally-produced food. I would actually have liked to see more of his longer-term vision of the future world; while the economics of why our world will get smaller are certainly worth understanding, I think I'm even more interested in the "what next?" aspect. After finding out the economic facts from Rubin, I'm hoping that he or someone else will write a more speculative book that goes into even more depth about the implications for our everyday lives. show less

This is one of the most insightful and level-headed books to emerge from authors who have recognized that the age of cheap fuel is over. Rubin sees a shift to a more local way of life due to the decline of cheap fuel, which also means a decline in global trading of heavy goods. He presciently envisions a range of changes, some difficult, some disruptive, but some that provide interesting opportunities too.