{"id":8572,"date":"2006-09-26T12:29:24","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T16:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8572.html"},"modified":"2006-09-26T12:29:24","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T16:29:24","slug":"so-much-for-competitiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/so-much-for-competitiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"So much for competitiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to the world’s most competitive economies, the United States leads the world. Or, at least we used to<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US has lost its status as the world’s most competitive economy, according to the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n

The US now ranks only sixth in the body’s league table of global competitiveness, behind Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Singapore. Risks attached to the large US trade and fiscal deficits prompted its fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the BBC<\/a>, countries were judged on “how conducive their business climates are to sustaining economic growth.” The World Economic Forum said stronger performing countries “were distinguished by their competent economic stewardship, investment in higher education and an emphasis on technological development and innovation.”<\/p>\n

At which point the forum looked at Republican budget priorities and started laughing uproariously.<\/p>\n

OK, perhaps not out loud<\/em>, but the WEF did say conclude that the American business environment was being endangered by the “fragile state” of our public finances.
\n<\/p>\n

The US has seen its budget and trade deficits spiral in the past few years as a result of heavy government spending and rising trade imbalances with countries such as China and Japan.<\/p>\n

The US trade deficit is expected to top last year’s record level of $717bn (\u00a3378bn; 565bn euros) in 2006, while the budget shortfall, although expected to be significantly lower than last year, is still forecast to be close to $300bn.<\/p>\n

“US competitiveness is threatened by large macroeconomic imbalances, particularly rising levels of public indebtedness associated with repeated fiscal deficits,” the report said. “Its relative ranking remains vulnerable to a possible disorderly adjustment of such imbalances.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Kevin Drum put it<\/a>, “Thanks, Republican Party!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to the world’s most competitive economies, the United States leads the world. Or, at least we used to. The US has lost its status as the world’s most competitive economy, according to the World Economic Forum. The US now ranks only sixth in the body’s league table of global competitiveness, behind Switzerland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}