Talk:Global Competitiveness Report

Portugal

Portugal was ranked in this study but it appears in grey as having not been ranked someone should correct thid

The Picure: Quartiles or Quintiles?

The caption in the image says quartiles but the picture has 5 colors (dark green, light green, grey, tan, red), so these must be quintiles, no? Perhaps the grey color means "no data"? Please check and confirm this. In any case, this graphic needs a key or legend. Thank you.--Mack2 11:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This bizarre report is meaningless

I'm curious as to how the U.S. could possibly be ranked #6 in this report, ahead of export powerhouses like Japan and Germany. The U.S. has by far the biggest trade deficit of any nation in history. The U.S. these days makes little that the rest of the world wants to buy. In fact, a great deal of what we export these days consists of nothing more than raw materials (yes, just like a Third World nation). So how can the U.S. be considered "competitive" at all? It's true, on the surface, things appear rosy in the U.S economic picture. Our jobless rate appears to be low. Our GDP growth rate appears healthy. But this is highly misleading. For a start, the vast majority of new jobs created in the U.S. are low-wage jobs. More and more Americans need to hold down at least 2 full-time jobs just to make ends meet. What's more, the U.S. has a gigantic prison population of over 2.2 million. Nothing like this exists elsewhere in the industrialized world. Last but not least, the U.S. dollar is being propped up in value these days by a gigantic infusion of foreign capital from Japan and and China. The U.S. economy would collapse were it not for the $2 billion in foreign capital that flows into our nation every day. What's more, I see that this report considers one factor to "competitiveness" to be a nation's education system. The U.S. K-12 education system is by far the worst in the First World. The U.S. business press loves to trumpet the American economy as the strongest in the world. But what baffles me is that, for such a supposedly strong and vibrant economy, it seems like the U.S. in reality in incapable of making much of anything that the rest of the world wishes to buy.

You are WAY off. First of all the United States is the second largest exporter in the world, so they are an export powerhouse. Second, competitvness is not exclusive to prision systems, standardized test scores and other mundane statistics you spring up.

The United States is competitive becauase of our innovation, higher education system, a flexible labor market, less red tape, and lower taxes. The world economy is dependant on the US economy, not the other way around. Even with capital inflows.