Newsweek, recently sold for one dollar by the Washington Post Company
but still in its hands, ranked the United States 11th, just behind
Denmark, in this week's "
The Best Countries in the World"
cover story which put Finland at #1, followed by Switzerland and
Sweden. There's hope for improvement, however, thanks to George W.
Bush's departure from the White House and Barack Obama's arrival.
Michael Hirsh explained the beyond the top ten rank:
America hasn't recovered from the serious blows to its
stature delivered by nearly a decade of policy debacles. As Obama never
tires of reminding the American public...he inherited a Herculean task: the Augean-stable-size mess left behind by George W. Bush.
The August 23 & 30 two-week edition cover story package certainly
reflected Obama's policy agenda. A sidebar (apparently not online) on
the nations with the best health care, which put Japan at the top,
touted
fourth-best Spain where "universal coverage is a constitutionally
guaranteed right, and there are no out-of-pocket expenses aside from
some prescription drugs." The U.S. wasn't even one of the top ten
countries listed (the full list online has the U.S. at #26 in health,
tied with the Czech Republic and Chile and behind Slovenia.)
In a two-page spread on particular bests for a bunch of nations,
Newsweek's Karen Fragala Smith, who tagged the Czech Republic as the
"Best Place for Sex" and Belgium as the "Best Place to Be a Dog Owner,"
declared France the "
Best Place to Have a Baby," trumpeting "low-cost health care" and nanny state services:
Maman is sitting pretty, with as much as seven months'
paid leave, low-cost health care, and a baby nurse who makes house
calls. If she's sick, the government sends someone to do the family's laundry.
In the
introductory article,
Rana Foroohar explained the purpose of the exercise was to determine:
"If you were born today, which country would provide you the very best
opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly
mobile life?"
The skew toward big government and corporate statism nations isn't a surprise when you see the experts the magazine relied upon:
The effort took several months, during which we received
copious aid from an advisory board that included Nobel laureate and
Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stiglitz; McKinsey & Co.
Social Sector Office director Byron Auguste; McKinsey Global Institute
director James Manyika; Jody Heymann, the founding director of McGill
University's Institute for Health and Social Policy and a professor at
the university; and Geng Xiao, director of Columbia's Global Center for
East Asia.
In his accompanying piece, "
We're No. 11! America may be declining, but don't despair," Michael Hirsh propounded:
America hasn't recovered from the serious blows to its
stature delivered by nearly a decade of policy debacles. As Obama never
tires of reminding the American public - which is listening less and
less, judging by his poll ratings - he inherited a Herculean task: the
Augean-stable-size mess left behind by George W. Bush. First there was
the diversion of military resources and attention from Afghanistan to
Iraq - a draining, misdirected war and occupation that many believe
never should have been launched. Then there was the long period of
fiscal, regulatory, and financial recklessness that contributed to the
worst-ever downturn since the Great Depression. Finally, Washington squandered its chance to lead on climate change.
The "aughts," The Washington Post wrote last January,
were really for naught: the 2000s were "a lost decade," the paper said,
with economic output rising at its slowest rate of any decade since the
1930s and an unprecedented net job growth of zero. It's no wonder other
countries started to catch up faster.
Of course, leading or not leading on "climate change" has nothing to
do with "which country would provide you the very best opportunity to
live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life" -
other than making it worse through higher prices and taxes.
The top 25 from Newsweek's ranking of the "best" 100 countries (screen shot is from Tuesday's Hannity):
1) Finland
2) Switzerland
3) Sweden
4) Australia
5) Luxembourg
6) Norway
7) Canada
8) Netherlands
9) Japan
10) Denmark
11) United States
12) Germany
13) New Zealand
14) United Kingdom
15) South Korea
16) France
17) Ireland
18) France
19) Belgium
20) Singapore
21) Spain
22) Israel
23) Italy
24) Slovenia
25) Czech Republic
Bottom three: Cameroon at #98, Nigeria at #99 and Burkina Faso at #100.
Where Newsweek placed the U.S. in some categories:
> #2, between Germany and France, in "Quality of Life Among Populous Nations."
> Also #2, below Singapore and above South Korea, in "Economic Dynamism."
In two categories featured in the magazine the U.S. didn't make it
into the ten countries listed: "Education" (Finland #1, South Korea #2,
Canada #3 and even Estonia, at #7, beat the U.S.) and "Health" (Japan
#1, Switzerland #2, Sweden #3, Spain #4, Italy #5).
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
