Talk:Global Competitiveness Report/Archives/2011

Portugal

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

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.

Exactly. Much of what the US exports is actually services, including finacial services, consulting, software development, and other high-tech or high-skill exports. The US also exports a lot in terms of global tourism [1](which, as a source of foreign currency, is considered an export for GDP purposes). Over the past five years, the US has ranged between #1 and #3 in the world in total exports, and is currently #3[2]. Those are the facts, so perhaps you should rely less on perception and more on the data that exist. And its colleges and universities are the envy of the world...no other country even comes close to matching the quality (and certainly not the quantity) of America's system of higher education. This is in part explained by the US expenditures for R&D, which lead the world and are almost twice that of Japan, the #2 country in this regard.[3]. Anyway, I could go on and on. Point is, don't rely on perception, get the facts.Shuneke (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

• Your comment makes sense, however, to reflect your POV would be WP:OR. I do suggest you do search a bit (as you did below) and include good critics from reliable sources, though keeping a WP:NPOV. I think this would be a good contribution. Good luck.--Mariordo (talk) 00:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Use of the GCR in academic journals

The article states that the report "has been widely cited and used by many scholarly and peer-reviewed articles." This isn't true, actually. If you click on the link that supposedly supports this assertion, it takes you to a list of citations in Google Scholar, all but one of which are citations for various editions of the report itself. Interestingly, the ONE journal article that does reference the GCR is a scathing critique of the report, it's methodology, and it's vailidity as a measure of competitiveness[4]. I am tempted to change this sentence to state that the opposite is, in fact, the case (the report is NOT accepted in the scholarly community) but the article is a bit old (2001) and the report has likely changed somewhat in its methods since. However, I still am not able to find any journal articles that make use of the report or its rankings in any way, let alone in a way that indicates agreement with the report. I'm going to just delete it, but would welcome any discussion of articles that actually do use the report for research purposes. Otherwise, I think it might be worth noting that scholars don't use it, and at least one has effectively trashed it.Shuneke (talk) 19:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

So Saudi Arabia is more competitive than China???

Saudi Arabia is competitive in exactly one business: Extracting, processing and exporting hydrocarbons.

Even to pretend that the economy of this country is actually more competitive than the economy of the worlds No.1 exporter of goods, largest industrial power and prime lender of last resort is to such an extent outrageously ridiculous that the only reasonable explanation has to be the indeed massive persuasive influence of regular Saudi donation checks just for keeping the guys in Davos in the right delusional mood. At least this would be an illustrative example of economic efficiency working smoothly.

S.K, Germany 94.220.252.16 (talk) 21:28, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow..., on what planet do those WEF guys actually live?

Now I'm really dumbfounded here, Saudi Arabia is meanwhile not only far ahead of China but also more competitive than South Korea and Israel!

Somebody should tell them that this kind of insane joke isn't funny any more and causes indeed heavy damage on their already collapsing scientific credibility.

Though unfortunately as long as Riyadh remains ´generous´ an ever more incredulous crowd of analysts will probably watch Saudi Arabia appear in the Top Twenty of next year's WEF GC ranking. 94.220.243.122 (talk) 04:08, 14 September 2010 (UTC) S.K.94.220.243.122 (talk) 04:08, 14 September 2010 (UTC)