America Drops to Fourth Place in Global Competitiveness Ranking

After being in 1st place in 2007 and 2008, America dropped behind Switzerland in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report in 2009. The 2010 ranking was just released, and the United States has tumbled two more spots to 4th place, behind Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore. I'm not a complete fan of the World Economic Forum's methodology (the Economic Freedom of the World rankings are the best measure of sound economic policy), but it's almost surely a bad sign when a country moves down in the rankings. The timing of the fall will lead some to blame Barack Obama, and I certainly agree that his policies are making America less competitive, but Bush also deserves blame for increasing the burden of government and compromising America's economic vitality. Here's a blurb from the Associated Press.

The U.S. has slipped down the ranks of competitive economies, falling behind Sweden and Singapore due to huge deficits and pessimism about government, a global economic group said Thursday. Switzerland retained the top spot for the second year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. It combines economic data and a survey of more than 13,500 business executives. Sweden moved up to second place while Singapore stayed at No. 3. The United States was in second place last year after falling from No. 1 in 2008.

Don't Be Afraid of the Chinese Economic Tiger

The news that China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy has generated a lot of attention. It shouldn't. There are roughly 10 times as many people in China as there are in Japan, so the fact that total gross domestic product in China is now bigger than total gross domestic product in Japan is hardly a sign of Chinese economic supremacy. Yes, China has been growing in recent decades, but it's almost impossible not to grow when you start at the bottom - which is where China was in the late 1970s thanks to decades of communist oppression and mismanagement. And the growth they have experienced certainly has not been enough to overtake other nations based on measures that compare living standards. According to the World Bank, per capita GDP (adjusted for purchasing power parity) was $6,710 for China in 2009, compared to $33,280 for Japan (and $46,730 for the U.S.). If I got to choose where to be a middle-class person, China certainly wouldn't be my first pick.

This is not to sneer at the positive changes in China. Hundreds of millions of people have experienced big increases in living standards. Better to have $6,710 of per capita GDP than $3,710. But China still has a long way to go if the goal is a vibrant and rich free-market economy. The country's nominal communist leadership has allowed economic liberalization, but China is still an economically repressed nation. Economic Freedom of the World ranks China 82 out of 141, just one spot above Russia, and the Index of Economic Freedom has an even lower score, 140 out of 179 nations.

Hopefully, China will continue to move in the right direction. As Jonah Goldberg notes in his Townhall column, it is good for America to have China become a more prosperous nation.

Yes, technically, China's gross domestic product is now slightly ahead of Japan's. But GDP is a gross statistic. It doesn't tell you nearly as much as you might think. In a very real way, China is still poorer than Japan. It's also poorer than Tunisia, Ecuador, Gabon, Kazakhstan and Namibia. ...China still has enormous problems, many of which aren't reflected in its GDP growth rates, and without democracy, a free press and the rule of law, we can't know what all of the problems are until they explode (and neither can the Chinese). But all of this misses the most important point. Economic "competitiveness" is a con. It assumes that when other countries prosper, America loses. That's nonsense. If the average Chinese worker were as rich as the average Japanese worker, it would be an economic windfall for the United States. Conversely, if China's economy imploded tomorrow, we would "gain" competitively but suffer economically. The cult of competitiveness is just a ruse used to justify the ambitions of economic planners and the pundits who worship them.

Proud to Be American

Saw this very encouraging CNN story linked on Hotair.com. According to a new poll, a comfortable majority of Americans recognize that the federal government is an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary people. My only quibble is that we're way past the threat stage. Between an oppressive tax system and a dependency-creating morass of spending programs, the federal government already is undermining our liberties. Our Founding Fathers would be very disappointed to see what has happened to our nation:

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. ...According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.

Europe Lags Behind

Since many of the politicians want America to be more like Europe (including full government-run healthcare), it's worth contemplating what that would mean for the economy. America today is richer than Western Europe. Indeed, per-capita living standards are about 30 percent higher in the United States - and that's according to the statists at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (see page 6 of this report). And we have been growing faster, which presumably should not be the case according to convergence theory (see Annex Table No. 1 of this OECD database). It also seems that Europe's economy is more likely to endure a double-dip recession. Bloomberg reports:

Europe’s economy may be coming unstuck from the global recovery as governments to the south of the region struggle to reverse budget deficits and consumers in the north pull back spending. After the 16-nation euro economy almost stagnated in the fourth quarter, data this week showed the weakness reaching into 2010. ...“Europe is where we see the biggest risk of a double dip at the global level,” said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London. “Europe has been lagging and we’ve continued to see better numbers in Asia and now the U.S.” ...“There are tentative signs that the U.S. economy may be pulling ahead from Europe,” Nelson said in a Feb. 23 report... “The sovereign debt crisis in Europe’s periphery reinforces drags on euro-area growth,” said Michael Saunders, an economist at Citigroup in London.

Irwin Stelzer, meanwhile, writes in the Washington Examiner about the same topic:

Europeans are comparing their close-to-zero growth rate in the last quarter of 2009 with our almost-6 percent growth. ...We are growing and they are not. ...Large numbers of shops in London are shuttered, students see no prospect of work when they graduate, and businessmen are groaning under rising tax burdens.

The Global Ranking that Really Matters

The United States may not have the freest economy in the world. And America may not be the best place to live. But we do have the most hotties, at least according to a poll of British travelers that was linked on Instapundit. Having done a bit of travel myself, I'd put Estonia at the top of the list for those who prefer blondes and Montenegro for those who prefer brunettes. But what do I know? Here's a report on the survey from the Daily Telegraph:

The United States, home to George Clooney and Jessica Simpson, came top in a poll of more than 5,000 globe-trotting Britons. In second place was Brazil while Spain, which boasts Hollywood actress Penelope Cruz as one of its natives, was third. Blonde, tanned surfers of Australia saw it voted into fourth place, while Italy came fifth. Sexy Swedes, such as model Victoria Silvstedt, helped it into sixth spot, but England only made it into seventh place in the poll. India was eighth, France ninth, and Canada finished off the top 10. ...A spokeswoman for www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the study, said: ''America has got a lot on offer and boasts some of the sexiest people on the planet.

Why I'm Proud to Be an American

Mark Steyn has a typically witty column that covers everything from the infamous Audi Superbowl commercial to the kid who was stopped by TSA for having Arabic-language flash cards. But he closes his piece with this powerful statement:

...the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons.

There are obviously millions of Europeans who want to be left alone and millions of Americans who like sticking their snouts in the public trough, but Mark's observation is generally true. The United States is the only major nation that still has a libertarian tradition of individual liberty and personal responsibility. This is why we need to stop government-run healthcare and roll back the nanny state. Yes, it is bad that bigger government undermines growth and prosperity, but the real danger is that collectivism will destroy the American soul.

Politicians Fiddle While America's Corporate Tax System Burns

KPMG has released its annual global survey of corporate tax systems. For the 10th-consecutive year, the average corporate tax rate fell, and it is now down to 25.5 percent (just 23.2 percent in the European Union!).

In the United States, unfortunately, the corporate tax rates remains stuck at about 40 percent. Only one developed nation, Japan, has a more punitive regime.

Something to keep in mind the next time a politician complains that jobs are going to China (corporate tax rate of 25 percent).

Global Prosperity Index Ranks America 9th, Behind Nations Such As Finland, Australia, and Canada

According to the Legatum Institute, Finland is the world's most prosperous nation, based on material well-being and certain social indicators. Other Nordic nations, as well as Switzerland and the Netherlands also rank above the United States. The variables that determined the ranking leave something to be desired from a libertarian perspective, but a column in the Wall Street Journal Europe, authored by the heads of the Legatum Institute and America Enterprise Institute, makes a valuable point about the the fact that the Nordic nations have very laissez-faire policies with the exception of large welfare states. This commitment to unfettered markets enables them to retain some dynamism, thus offsetting to some degree the negative impact of too much taxes and spending. As the column notes, this has important lessons - especially for the United States, which is moving toward bigger government and more intervention in private markets:

...free enterprise has come under attack with the global economic crisis, the perceived threat of climate change, and a broader concern—most recently promoted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy—that growth alone does not indicate prosperity. ...Many people—especially Americans—think of wealth as the basis of health and happiness, too. In other words, market economies with good economic fundamentals drive us to more fulfilling lives. Europeans often counter that a narrow pecuniary viewpoint gives a distorted picture of the human experience. Worse yet, it can lead to the tyranny of materialism. Who is right? ...While free enterprise is not the only important factor explaining national differences in well-being, it probably does explain most of it. This means subverting the mechanisms of free enterprise would not just lead to lower economic growth but also lower social scores. The fact that the Nordic countries do so well in the Prosperity Index has largely to do with the fact that apart from their welfare policies, they also encourage entrepreneurship, free trade, and have stable monetary policies—even as they employ strong rhetoric against capitalism. Finland, Sweden and Denmark all score higher than Switzerland and nearly all of their southern European counterparts on their capacity to commercialize innovation, through factors such as business start-up procedures, business registration rates, and royalties on patents. All of this drives dynamic entrepreneurship, and spurs people to innovate and take risks, as they are more reassured that good ideas will pay off. U.S. policy makers would do well to note this fact as they contemplate more "European" policies. And as the West contemplates ever tighter regulations on how and where money can be spent, lent and invested, their leaders should remember that economic and political liberty—while not the whole story—play a key role in prosperity. They are the engine driving much of what makes life worthwhile.