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U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

122 points by spking 8y ago

KirinDave 8y ago
And fewer and fewer people benefit from it. So okay. Great. Now let's do it in a way that doesn't turn the entire nation into a series of hyper-reactionary tribes fighting over leftovers.
shmolyneaux 8y ago
The content of this article is based on the 2018 The Global Competitiveness Report which you can find here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2018.pdf http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalC...
- munk-a 8y ago
  So there's a handy table in that document that shows all the rankings and notes that the US position hasn't moved in the past year, how is this article even a thing?
  - dkasper 8y ago
    You’re not wrong that the chart shows that rank didn’t change for some reason, but if you look at the 2017 report you’ll see the US was number 2 last year.
neonate 8y ago
http://archive.is/b1dLN http://archive.is/b1dLN
threeseed 8y ago
That economic growth came at a pretty severe cost though. The budget deficit blew out by 17% in 2018 as a result of the tax cuts.
- sparkling 8y ago
  Look at relative debt to GDP ratio rather than absolute numbers.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    Also look at the interest paid on the debt, which is also low relative to historical levels
    - mgkimsal 8y ago
      it's rising though, and will, I assume, rise faster as interest rates rise and the cost of the debt rises along with it (either immediately or in the near future). IIRC, current interest on debt is something like $400B, which is more than the budgets of many entire depts (dept of energy budget is ~$30B for example).
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    Does that metric work well on this timescale? I thought with how much debt we have spending will pretty much always lower the ratio in the short term.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Not sure why since I was talking about percentage change in deficit. And I am more concerned whether the tax cuts delivered an effective ROI.
  - endorphone 8y ago
    It's approaching 100%. As for the deficit, it's at 4% and rising to 4.7% in 2019. During full employment. During what can reasonably be called boomed times. Historic deficits. This isn't normal.
- tjr225 8y ago
  I wonder who will be left to pay for the deficit when all is said and done?
kevmo 8y ago
Meanwhile, household debt is at it's all-time high, $13.3 trillion... surpassing its previous peak in 2008. https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html This article seems like fluff/propaganda.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  when ppl think of household debt, they think big screen TVs and other discretionary items, but it's actually mostly mortgages and student loans https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Household-Debt-1.png https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Hous...
  - sxates 8y ago
    Cost of houses and education are both way up, so it would make sense. Does this stat get calibrated against inflation or wages?
  - IMTDb 8y ago
    Which is even scarier. In case of default, discretionary items can be seize and sold to at least repay part of the debt (while decreasing quality of life). 2008 has shown what seizing houses leads to. Now think that there is nothing to seize for student debt loans. If you fail to get a good enough income using the degree you paid using debt, you are as hopeless as if you had used it all on hookers and cocaine. At least with discretionary items you have a big TV which holds some value.
    - tomjen3 8y ago
      Cars might hold some value, houses might hold more value over time, but TVs? Don't expect much. What we need is to make college debt discharable through bankruptcy, same as any other debt. Then the only people who can borrow are those likely to be able to pay it of, which nicely solves the problem of unplayable college debt (while reducing the interest students of medical, science, law etc have to pay, since more money will be chasing fewer students), for profit colleges and useless degrees. Does it mean some people won't be able to study their favourite subject? In general no[0], in college? Yes. [0]: Remember the " you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"? Today it is probably 15 USD on Beeminder, and you won't have a degree, but that degree is worthless in the first place, so overall huge win.
paulpauper 8y ago
I think it has been competitive for a lot longer than that. Despite all the bad news about partisanship, Trump, wealth inequality, there is a lot of innovation in the US and intellectual output from research universities and the private sector. It's why the rich Chinese keep coming here and keep buying up the real estate and applying to the most prestigious of universities. There's more good news than bad even though the former gets so much attention.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  It moved up from #2 last year. A less sensational headline would be something like "A bunch of countries with approximately equal competitiveness scores had their scores change by approximately 1%".
geofft 8y ago
Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many hackers participate in the world economy just as many normies do. Earlier there was an NYT opinion piece from a sad conservative college professor (flagged), and before that a page from GOPUSA.com calling an internal Google presentation "the end of free speech as we know it" (flagkilled). How is this stuff getting upvoted?
- nostromo 8y ago
  This is a report on the competitiveness of the US economy. Seems pretty very relevant to a group of entrepreneurs.
- arama471 8y ago
  Isn't the Bloomberg thing literally about hacking? Or are you talking about a different China Bloomberg article than I am
  - jackconnor 8y ago
    Well, big argument about this was as it's technically "about" hacking, it just seems that they made most of it up. It is definitely China fear-mongering, though, so I'd say you're both right.
  - xeroaura 8y ago
    I think they mean the one that is #2 right now about China's hidden debt.
    - enraged_camel 8y ago
      Economics is totally fair game IMO. But if we start seeing articles about, say, midterm elections, that would suck. :)
ta2987 8y ago
HN: no politics allowed, except when they are.
- monetus 8y ago
  If you really care, you could try to flag it couldn't you? A lot of the users seem to be more business oriented though, and they will want to hack the economy... So good luck.
irascible 8y ago
As our deficit nears 1 trillion..
yvsong 8y ago
Competitive or competent?
davidw 8y ago
Seems relevant: http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings
Avshalom 8y ago
Is that 2008 based on data immediately before or after the largest economic catastrophe sine the Great Depression?

122 points by spking 8y ago

And fewer and fewer people benefit from it. So okay. Great. Now let's do it in a way that doesn't turn the entire nation into a series of hyper-reactionary tribes fighting over leftovers.

shmolyneaux 8y ago

The content of this article is based on the 2018 The Global Competitiveness Report which you can find here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2018.pdf http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalC...

munk-a 8y ago
So there's a handy table in that document that shows all the rankings and notes that the US position hasn't moved in the past year, how is this article even a thing?
- dkasper 8y ago
  You’re not wrong that the chart shows that rank didn’t change for some reason, but if you look at the 2017 report you’ll see the US was number 2 last year.

neonate 8y ago

http://archive.is/b1dLN http://archive.is/b1dLN

threeseed 8y ago

That economic growth came at a pretty severe cost though. The budget deficit blew out by 17% in 2018 as a result of the tax cuts.

sparkling 8y ago
Look at relative debt to GDP ratio rather than absolute numbers.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  Also look at the interest paid on the debt, which is also low relative to historical levels
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    it's rising though, and will, I assume, rise faster as interest rates rise and the cost of the debt rises along with it (either immediately or in the near future). IIRC, current interest on debt is something like $400B, which is more than the budgets of many entire depts (dept of energy budget is ~$30B for example).
- tdb7893 8y ago
  Does that metric work well on this timescale? I thought with how much debt we have spending will pretty much always lower the ratio in the short term.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Not sure why since I was talking about percentage change in deficit. And I am more concerned whether the tax cuts delivered an effective ROI.
- endorphone 8y ago
  It's approaching 100%. As for the deficit, it's at 4% and rising to 4.7% in 2019. During full employment. During what can reasonably be called boomed times. Historic deficits. This isn't normal.
tjr225 8y ago
I wonder who will be left to pay for the deficit when all is said and done?

kevmo 8y ago

Meanwhile, household debt is at it's all-time high, $13.3 trillion... surpassing its previous peak in 2008. https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html This article seems like fluff/propaganda.

paulpauper 8y ago
when ppl think of household debt, they think big screen TVs and other discretionary items, but it's actually mostly mortgages and student loans https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Household-Debt-1.png https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Hous...
- sxates 8y ago
  Cost of houses and education are both way up, so it would make sense. Does this stat get calibrated against inflation or wages?
- IMTDb 8y ago
  Which is even scarier. In case of default, discretionary items can be seize and sold to at least repay part of the debt (while decreasing quality of life). 2008 has shown what seizing houses leads to. Now think that there is nothing to seize for student debt loans. If you fail to get a good enough income using the degree you paid using debt, you are as hopeless as if you had used it all on hookers and cocaine. At least with discretionary items you have a big TV which holds some value.
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    Cars might hold some value, houses might hold more value over time, but TVs? Don't expect much. What we need is to make college debt discharable through bankruptcy, same as any other debt. Then the only people who can borrow are those likely to be able to pay it of, which nicely solves the problem of unplayable college debt (while reducing the interest students of medical, science, law etc have to pay, since more money will be chasing fewer students), for profit colleges and useless degrees. Does it mean some people won't be able to study their favourite subject? In general no[0], in college? Yes. [0]: Remember the " you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"? Today it is probably 15 USD on Beeminder, and you won't have a degree, but that degree is worthless in the first place, so overall huge win.

paulpauper 8y ago

I think it has been competitive for a lot longer than that. Despite all the bad news about partisanship, Trump, wealth inequality, there is a lot of innovation in the US and intellectual output from research universities and the private sector. It's why the rich Chinese keep coming here and keep buying up the real estate and applying to the most prestigious of universities. There's more good news than bad even though the former gets so much attention.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
It moved up from #2 last year. A less sensational headline would be something like "A bunch of countries with approximately equal competitiveness scores had their scores change by approximately 1%".

geofft 8y ago

Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many hackers participate in the world economy just as many normies do. Earlier there was an NYT opinion piece from a sad conservative college professor (flagged), and before that a page from GOPUSA.com calling an internal Google presentation "the end of free speech as we know it" (flagkilled). How is this stuff getting upvoted?

nostromo 8y ago
This is a report on the competitiveness of the US economy. Seems pretty very relevant to a group of entrepreneurs.
arama471 8y ago
Isn't the Bloomberg thing literally about hacking? Or are you talking about a different China Bloomberg article than I am
- jackconnor 8y ago
  Well, big argument about this was as it's technically "about" hacking, it just seems that they made most of it up. It is definitely China fear-mongering, though, so I'd say you're both right.
- xeroaura 8y ago
  I think they mean the one that is #2 right now about China's hidden debt.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    Economics is totally fair game IMO. But if we start seeing articles about, say, midterm elections, that would suck. :)

ta2987 8y ago

HN: no politics allowed, except when they are.

monetus 8y ago
If you really care, you could try to flag it couldn't you? A lot of the users seem to be more business oriented though, and they will want to hack the economy... So good luck.

irascible 8y ago

As our deficit nears 1 trillion..

yvsong 8y ago

Competitive or competent?

davidw 8y ago

Seems relevant: http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings

Avshalom 8y ago

Is that 2008 based on data immediately before or after the largest economic catastrophe sine the Great Depression?