Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I finally found someone who wrote a book on the economic topic that I think is largely ignored: the coming retirement of millions of baby-boomers and how that is going to effect the economic landscape for the next 30 years. Harry Dent is spot on in recognizing how this shift is likely to cause extremely large changes in spending habits for millions of individuals, and, more importantly, what that means to folks like me that are much younger (37). Mr. Dent does a marvelous job developing his thesis with various graphs supporting the notion that as people age their spending habits change. But that's about as far as he goes. As others have noted, he quickly loses focus (and credibility in my opinion) when he jumps into all sorts of other "wave" theories. This starts in chapter 2 and continues for the rest of the book. I was totally captured by the first chapter (thesis) and by chapter 2 or 3 I just started skimming as he runs terribly off topic. Mr. Dent is rather like a conspiracy theorist: if you believe in one conspiracy you believe in them all. Dent believes in one wave (the demographic wave) but then goes on in nausiating fashion to show a bunch of other waves, which in my opinion are used by fanatics who are trying to sell a product rather than real science. Dent's got an excellent theory and the data to support what will happen to spending levels in different areas over the next 30 years: why the heck is he talking about solar activity? He could have written a detailed book, almost an industry-by-chapter- about exactly what his data shows. But he got lazy. And moreover, he loses credibility because every few pages he says something akin to: "if you go to my website I'll send you a newsletter and you can follow along as we go." Guess what? To get Mr. Dent's data in any useful form, you'll have to pay for a subscription. Too bad: Dent could have been a really great author. He could have developed this topic and gone into a mainstream career as the go-to authority on the demographic shift that's about to occur. But in the end you end up feeling like he's more a snake-oil salesman than a true professional. What could have been isn't!