Competition and US

Every year, in early September, the World Economic Forum releases its statistics on how nations rank as global competitors. We used to ride number one routinely, but we are slip-sliding away with each passing year. We dropped two more notches (from 2011) to seventh in 2012 as Germany and the Netherlands – with their universal healthcare and lots of social nets – moved above us in the standings. Seems that productivity and humanity are not mutually exclusive, but better training and a functional government appear to be mission critical.

Even our political process – the proclivity to eschew compromise no matter the cost, the “block anything and everything the other side wants” House of Representatives – has tanked our productivity. “The report found that some aspects of the U.S.’s political environment continue to raise concern among business leaders, ‘particularly the low public trust in politicians and a perceived lack of government efficiency.’

“The Forum -- which also hosts an annual gathering of global business and political leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos every January -- ranks a country's competitiveness according to factors such as the state of its infrastructure and its ability to foster innovation.” DailyFinance.com, September 5^th.

As our educational system cracks and staggers under the pressure of declining school budgets and descending national test scores, as tuition for our colleges and universities soars while access to student loans and financial aid plummets, the U.S. is obliging every other competitive nation on earth by taking itself out of the race and opening the door for “other countries” to trump our productivity, take over our innovative abilities (China’s patents are growing much faster than our output these days) and replace our once dynamic and inventive economy because we are unwilling to invest in ourselves or our future. We use to be first in the percentage of our population with college educations; today, we’ve fallen to 16^th.

Our infrastructure is crumbling, traffic snarls slow the movement of goods across the land, our access to water is dwindling and big projects await big disasters to move us to action (knowing that the damage will be billions more than had we anticipated the problem). Productivity takes a hit in oh-so-many-ways. But we’ll spend fortunes on a new aircraft carrier or stealth just-about-anything… even if there may nothing left to defend if we cannot restart our commitment to growth.

So where’s the beef? “Switzerland tops the overall rankings of 144 economies in the Global Competitiveness Report 2012-13 for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Singapore. The Forum said Switzerland's standing rests notably on its innovation and labor market efficiency, as well as the sophistication of its business sector… Including Switzerland, six northern European countries make up the top 10. Others on the leaderboard include Hong Kong and Japan, while the central African country of Burundi brings up the rear.

“Though northern European countries have consolidated their positions since the financial crisis of 2008, the survey found that those in southern Europe, such as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, continue to suffer from a host of economic problems, including poor access to financing and rigid labor markets. Greece is faring worst of Europe’s problem economies and is ranked at 96th.” DailyFinance.com. The good news is that we are a whole lot more productive than most countries, and our use of efficiency-boosting technology has given us that saving grace… for now.

But we are moving in the wrong direction, and every time we cut educational quality and access, refuse to repair and improve infrastructure or cut off a research grant, we are ceding territory to our competitors. And they really could care less that we have deficit issues. They’re investing against us… and are taking advantage of our own misplaced sense of priorities.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even for the gleeful who are still on top in this country, they are increasingly surrounded by angry former members of the middle class who had their lives ripped out from under them and whose children are doomed to a lower standard of living than they had.