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US is World's Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade (wsj.com)
schwit1 shares a report: The U.S. is back on top as the most competitive country in the world, regaining the No. 1 spot for the first time since 2008 in an index produced by the World Economic Forum [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], which said the country could still do better on social issues. America climbed one place in the rankings of 140 countries, with the top five rounded out by Singapore, Germany, Switzerland and Japan. All five countries' scores rose from 2017, with the U.S. notching the second-biggest gain after Japan's. [...] The Global Competitiveness Report this year assessed 140 countries on 98 indicators that measure business investment and productivity. The indicators are organized into 12 main drivers of productivity including the nations' institutions, tech savvy, infrastructure, education systems, market size and innovation.
Woo! Victory lap!
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No we donâ(TM)t
The US has had a trade deficit since the '70s, and still does. What is the value of 'most competitive' if you have to borrow money from the rest of the world in order to pay for your imports ?
Sounds like another of those bullshit evaluations in which you can make the order come out how you like depending what weight you attach to the measured parameters - even assuming they are measured correctly (or guessed) in the first place. For example, FTFA :
This year the WEF changed its methodology to better account for ... [blah blah, blah .....]
Analogically speaking... That's like saying that the ONE olympic star on television winning medals is representative that everyone sitting on their couch eating potato chips watching them perform, are also winning medals.
What is a competitive economy really when for thirty or fourty years, the economy of the PEOPLE has been GUTTED by the corporations and politics supporting them?
Fucking hogwash!
Change we can believe in.
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If we enter a recession within the next 2 or 6 years, and especially if Obama-era stimulus isn't feasible due to already low interest rates and increased debt & deficits, will you assign any of the blame to Trump?
I'm guessing it'll all be democrats fault, even if they control only the house and can't pass legislation. Even if Republicans manage to hold onto the house and senate next month, will you somehow still try to assign the blame for any downturn to wild conspiracy theories involving Hillary Clinton?
If this current ~3% annual growth, which began back in mid-2009 during Obama's first term, continues with interruption for 6 more years, then Trump will indeed deserve substantial credit, regardless of how distasteful his personality and how childish his Twitter rants may be.
But at this moment, when the USA is most able to pay down its massive accumulated debt and put itself on a financially sound course, Trump and republicans (who repeatedly called for a balanced budget when democrats held power) are racking up huge deficits that are just piling on more debt. They're deregulating the financial sector, which has allowed massive buildup of consumer and student debt. Massive consumer debt, overly leveraged by the deregulated financial "industry" is what caused the great recession 10 years ago (near the end of Bush's tenure). Collectively we all should have learned a lesson, but sadly it seems we didn't.
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Unemployment, which has continued the same trend without an inflection point since recovery started before Trump, is all there is to talk about. All those corporate tax savings benefited the wealthy. Mostly used for stock buybacks. Wages are flat. There was no cut in government spending, so Trump's giveaway to the already-wealthy resulted in a large increase in deficit, expected to top $1 trillion next year. Meanwhile, tariffs are hurting many sectors significantly, as well as the poor and middle class, who are hurt by the price increases. The bailout to farmers hurt by the tariffs wasn't nearly sufficient by their own account. The trade war is only going to get worse. Manufacturing still isn't coming back.
But yeah, keep harping on the unemployment figure, because that's what most important. And to still think Trump has any business savvy whatsoever, after he underperformed the market, lied about being self-made, got bailed out by his father countless times... ugh, the delusion.
With so many pretending that they actually know how the economy works please find US Federal Reserve Act.
I'm still trying to figure it out myself. Somehow though, I think presidents are more the tail than they are the dog.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Indeed... 779 billion dollars deficit for the first year of the Trump administration.
That's between tax breaks for the rich and spending even more on "defense".
Guess who's going to have to pay that back? I'll bet it won't be Trump's rich friends.
Let me put it more clearly. The point was that the last time the numbers looked like this, there was an economic collapse that crashed the global economy. The point is that this metric is a poor indicator of the actual health of the economy, and citing it uncritically as a good thing is ignoring history.
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The bottom line is Presidents have a relatively small short-term impact on the economy. The boom/bust cycle has been showing its face for more than a 100 years and I doubt any President can stop the cycle; only tweak it around the edges (not always in good ways).
Economies are also affected by other nations' economies, OPEC decisions, and war.
Presidents do affect things like deficits and regulations, but these typically won't change the economy much in the short term.
(I suppose deregulation can act as a stimulus, but it's not fun to be poisoned even if it increases profits for somebody else. Birth defects and injuries do improve medical economies just as breaking windows increases repair jobs. But if enough people are poisoned with heavy metals or hurt on the job, our economy won't be competitive.)
Table-ized A.I.
If this current ~3% annual growth, which began back in mid-2009 during Obama's first term
It did? I don't see a single year that reached 3% since 2005.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is what happens when you put a true entrapeneur, and verified job creator with business savvy and acumen, into office rather than the career politicians we are used to that simply are trying to stretch things out for a nice pension. Trump has brought old school competitive spirit and American agressiveness back into the White House. Say what you will about his personality or personal decisions but the man is a bulldog when it comes to business and all Americans are now reaping the rewards with record low jobless rates, more job openings than there are people to fill them, and record low taxes. It's simply amazing to me when I think about what is going to be possible with 6 more years of this environment.
You overestimate the amount of control a US president has over the economy. All that Trump did is lower taxes, and while this will always provide a short-term boost to any economy, at this current time I think it was a bad move.
The reason is that the economy is already showing signs of overheating. Look at the NASDAQ and DOW over the last 10 years: up, up, up. The economy was already improving greatly after the financial crisis during the Obama years. There is so much cash moving around, the stock markets have basically exploded and are overdue for a big correction. The last thing you want to do in a situation like this, is infuse even more money into the economy. It will just delay the correction and make the resulting crash and shock to the economy that much harder. Also, the tax cuts will further increase the already immense pile of debt. So what Trump is doing is buying a short-term economic boost that is not needed and actually detrimental over the medium term with more debt for future generations.
You can call that genius entrepreneurship, but really you don't need to be a genius to know that tax cuts boost the economy. What matters is the timing and the context, which in my opinion couldn't be worse right now.
But I'm sure we will see the results of that pretty soon. Maybe in time for Trumps reelection(?).
Remarkably little? As a Canadian I'm a little miffed at that, as Trump has taken away a massive amount of our foreign investment with his reduction of taxes and regulations. To be fair, he's had Trudeau on our side increasing taxes and regulations which has exacerbated Trump's successes, but the data is quite clear. (Examples here and here).
You might think these are just economist talking points but they have significant effect on economic growth and quality of life for each country, and Trump is clearly winning here.
Wage growth is 1% account for inflation with the median weekly earnings up only 0.57% per year.
Plunged after the election? Are you blind or lying, that graph shows a nearly perfect linear decrease from 01/10 to 01/18; long before the election.
So GDP increased substantially but wage growth only beat inflation by 1%? And you think this is evidence against corporations reaping the benefits of the tax break without doing much for the rank and file why exactly?
DJIA/NASDAQ are up which is benefiting large investors, you're just making my point for me now.
You really want to argue that manufacturing is going to be anywhere near the levels it based on that growth? At the rate it grew it would take decades to reach where it was before the crash that started in 2000.
So let's see, your argument consisted of ignoring context, then lying, then listing 3 items that you didn't realize supported my complaint about the tax cuts, then made an argument that ignored absolute numbers, and to top it all off, insisted the facts actually supported your fantasy. Yup, that's a conservative argument. If you're already wealthy there's no doubt you're experiencing a great windfall in the Trump economy, but it's not trickling down this time either... shocker.