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CHAPTER 1THE AMERICAS

Latin America faces a critical choice. It is a choice between the past and the future… a commitment to sustainable human development.

— Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico

We will begin our world tour with the Western Hemisphere as we examine how the global talent showdown is affecting North, Central, and South America. The United States will be our first stop. In late 2007 the World Economic Forum, a Swiss-based think tank, gave the United States the top spot in its annual report on global competitiveness. It praised the United States’ market efficiency and ability to innovate. This ranking may not last, however, because the U.S. talent pool is drying up. An obsolete twentieth-century education-to-employment system ...

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