United States falls to 5th most competitive nation

[IndyPragmatist]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/business/global/us-slides-singapore-rises-in-competitiveness-survey.html

U.S. Slides, Singapore Rises in Competitiveness Survey
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: September 7, 2011

LONDON — The United States is slipping and emerging markets are improving, but European economies still dominate the list of the most competitive economies in the world, according to a World Economic Forum report released Wednesday.

For the third consecutive year, Switzerland ranked first in the forum’s annual competitiveness survey , which assesses countries based on 12 categories including innovation, infrastructure and the macro-economic environment.

The United States — which topped the list in 2008 — continued its decline, also for the third year in a row, falling one place to fifth position. The weaker performance was attributed to economic vulnerabilities as well as “some aspects of the United States’ institutional environment,” notably low public trust in politicians and concerns about government inefficiency.

Singapore overtook Sweden to claim the second position. But perhaps surprisingly, given the crisis of confidence that continues to plague the European financial system, Western European countries dominated survey’s top 10 economies.

[IndyPragmatist]

1. from the report itself

The United States continues the decline that began three years ago, falling one more position to 5th place.
While many structural features continue to make its economy extremely productive, a number of escalating
weaknesses have lowered the US ranking in recent years. US companies are highly sophisticated and
innovative, supported by an excellent university system that collaborates admirably with the business sector
in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its
domestic economy—the largest in the world by far—these qualities continue to make the United States very
competitive. On the other hand, there are some weaknesses in particular areas that have deepened since
past assessments. The business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions
(39th). In particular, its trust in politicians is not strong (50th), it remains concerned about the government’s
ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (50th), and it considers that the
government spends its resources relatively wastefully (66th). In comparison with last year, policymaking is
assessed as less transparent (50th) and regulation as more burdensome (58th).

A lack of macroeconomic stability continues to be the United States’ greatest area of weakness (90th).
Over the past decade, the country has been running repeated fiscal deficits, leading to burgeoning levels of
public indebtedness that are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth. On a more positive note,
after having declined for two years in a row, measures of financial market development are showing a
hesitant recovery, improving from 31st last year to 22nd overall this year in that pillar.

http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-competitiveness/index.html

[IndyPragmatist]

2. Another excellent resource for examining the data

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z6409butolt8la_&ctype=c&strail=false&nselm=s&met_y=gci&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&idim=country:AUS:BOL:BFA:CHE:TUR:BHR:TTO:CMR&ifdim=country&tunit=Y&pit=1315346400000&hl=en&dl=en&icfg&uniSize=0.007912824202673797&iconSize=0.5

Shows a heck of a lot of information

[IndyPragmatist]

3. So nobody is going to acknowledge this?

I've been looking at the actual data and I agree with the drop. I'm just a bit confused why nobody seems to care about this?

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. my comment on this from another thread is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4987223#4987495