The U.S. Just Misses The Top 10

Posted by | August 17, 2010 10:08 | Filed under: Top Stories


In NEWSWEEK‘s list of the world’s top 100 nations, the United States weights in at number 11. A couple of wars sapping a troubled economy don’t help matters. And our inability to agree on climate change has hurt, too.

On any number of indicators, according to the NEWSWEEK list, the United States is not the worldbeater it was a decade ago. “On economic fundamentals such as GDP growth, household consumption, industrial production, and trade, the U.S. was ahead on most metrics 10 years ago,” says James Manyika, director of the McKinsey Global Institute. Today, in contrast, America barely makes the top quartile, and it’s fallen to the bottom quartile in R&D.

China, the putative future superpower, now has a much higher rate of patent creation than the United States, as well as a higher number of engineers being graduated.

But hey, all isn’t lost.  We beat out South Korea and Singapore. And because we still have a First Amendment that applies unless you want to build an Islamic center, you can wear a nice little glove that says “We’re #1.”

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Copyright 2010 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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