The World Economic Forum, best known as the catering outfit that handles the annual meeting for rich people in Davos, has announced its new “global competitiveness ranking.” There remains some confusion as to what a “global competitiveness ranking” is, but America took sixth place. This might or might not be important news. In any case, it was BusinessWeek Online‘s lead story today.
“Americans aren’t No. 1 anymore,” the story begins, “and their government is largely to blame.” In support of this thesis, there are these facts: America is ranked 40th in “health care” and 69th in “macroeconomics.” This might be better than last year. Or it might be worse. Either way, the government did it.
And that “seems to be the bottom line.” Which really is a much easier way to understand everything. The macroeconomic situation is 69. Health is 40. And there it is: the state of the nation in a nutshell. Or more precisely, America is 6. It is not 1. Need we know more?
Probably not, but the story gives it to us. There is the following news: America has a lot of AIDS cases. The flood in New Orleans was “mishandled.” The United States has a large budget deficit. China has weak public institutions. And get this: India gets high scores for “innovation.” That is amazing.
And that, essentially, is all of the information contained in today’s lead story on the Web site of America’s business magazine of record. It is hard to say why the story has one economist saying the information “is not interesting to me.” Maybe he didn’t know that the new No. 1 globally competitive superpower is … Switzerland.
Switzerland’s government is good.
