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The US kicks ass on economic vitality and regulatory efficiency

Does the jackboot of the federal government throttle economic activity in the US? It doesn't seem that way:

I'm a little surprised to see Hong Kong still at the top of the list. I guess that when China cracked down on civil liberties they left all the economic regulations alone. As usual, we're in the top two three among large countries.

We're really good at encouraging entrepreneurs, too, and allowing them to grow to $1 billion or more.

We're pretty good on patents:

According to the World Bank, we make it pretty easy to get a loan if you want to open a diner or an auto shop:

Our regulatory environment is second in the world among large countries:

It looks to me like we do really well on practically every metric of dynamism, economic freedom, and ease of doing business. There's always room for improvement, though!

32 thoughts on “The US kicks ass on economic vitality and regulatory efficiency

    1. Srho

      We litigated whether the USA was going to hell on November 5.

      Verdict: it was going to hell on November 5, but suddenly it's not.

      1. Josef

        This is the warm up. He hasn't even been sworn in yet. We are going to hell, we are currently in transit. We will reach our destination on January 20, 2025.

  1. SnowballsChanceinHell

    This bizarre turn where you argue from meaningless indices that everything is fine... this is why the Democrats lost.

    Your faction fundamentally believes that we have reached the end of history. That the superstructure is fine. All that is needed is some fiddling with the details. That the damned peasants should be grateful that their betters condescend to run things so smoothly.

    You chide people from broken-down midwestern towns for attributing the collapse of their communities to "NAFTA." You purse your lips at their ignorance. Because you've looked at a graph. You understand that their loss flows from granting China permanent most-favored-nation status. Not "NAFTA."

    And yet you blithely assert that granting China permanent most-favored-nation status was the right thing to do. And you would do it again.

    1. sonofthereturnofaptidude

      Kevin is not arguing that "everything is fine." He's presenting data to refute the GOP line that deregulation will improve the economy. If you're going to argue a point, make sure the point you're arguing is under discussion.

      1. SnowballsChanceinHell

        This is just another "everything is fine" post from Kevin.

        Housing is fine.
        https://jabberwocking.com/housing-today-is-expensive-but-not-by-a-lot/
        https://jabberwocking.com/another-look-at-americas-housing-shortage/

        Manufacturing is fine.
        https://jabberwocking.com/america-still-knows-how-to-build-stuff/

        Wages are fine.
        https://jabberwocking.com/wages-have-been-outpacing-inflation-for-five-years/

        Inflation is fine.
        https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-inflation-has-been-nearly-normal-for-the-past-year/comment-page-1/

        Social media is fine.
        https://jabberwocking.com/yet-another-look-at-social-media-and-teen-depression/

        This last one is particularly funny, because Kevin somehow manages to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time:

        1) Social media isn't responsible for increases in negativity
        2) Fox News is responsible for increases in negativity.

    2. dvhall99

      The people living in broken down midwestern towns believe NAFTA is the cause of their woes. Yet they voted for Trump who declared NAFTA was the best deal in the history of deals when he renegotiated it. There are multiple levels of ignorance here, including the residents of these midwestern towns believing high tariffs on products manufactured in China by Western corporations will be paid by ‘China.’

      1. MrPug

        Trump basically just rebranded NAFTA as UMSCA (not a great rebranding, but whatever). But, now UMSCA is the worst trade deal ever negotiated by a real fucking moron, which is why we now need tariffs! Makes sense to me.

        1. Salamander

          That's "USMCA" not "UMSCA." For "US Mexico Canada". Remember, it's pronounced "Uzmucka", not "Umsucka" -- although that second one works, too, I guess.

    3. Citizen99

      Ah, the old saw about those poor Rust Belt Factory Towns where the factories closed and somehow this was all the fault of the Democrats. The brilliant Reagan-Bush scam (the Clintons did it with NAFTA and that's why you all have no option but to destroy your lives with meth and/or opioids) that paved the way for the King of All Scammers to now take power.

      Those "meaningless indices" were, of course, taken as gospel when they helped support the Great Scam that Republicans are better for the economy because Business. But now for some reason they are just empty blatherings by the "elites" who don't understand the real salt-of-the-earth horse-sense people in the fly-over heartland. All that book-larnin' don't mean nothin' no more!

  2. Austin

    “I guess that when China cracked down on civil liberties they left all the economic regulations alone.”

    Might want to ask Jack Ma and Jimmy Lai about that. Apparently it mattered greatly how they were earning their money, which means “civil liberties” do touch on “economic regulations” in some industrial sectors.

  3. JohnH

    I'm afraid any organization with an "economic freedom" index has me highly suspicious, but good to know, thanks, especially with Kevin's added supoorting data.

    In any event, of course the usual GOP complaint isn't that government doesn't function well. It's that it delivers to the rest of us the just desserts of the rich. Trump and Musk just give it a personal twist, that they get to loot the treasury before the rest of the upper class.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      Maybe less than you think.

      The report shows that overall patent litigation is declining, injunction grants are low, and litigation by non-practicing entities (NPEs) is not pervasive.

      ...If the anecdotes are to be believed, not only is patent litigation excessive but it is being driven by “patent trolls.” Patent trolls or, less pejoratively, PAEs, are patent owners who acquire patents and then assert them against alleged infringers. The Marcum report ... find[s] that over the 20 years of their study, only 23% of remedies were awarded to NPEs. Furthermore ... injunctions are effectively unavailable to NPEs with only 12 injunction grants (excluding default judgments) over the last 10 years of the study. ...the median damage awards to NPEs (excluding default judgments) have declined approximately 25-30%from their peak in the period 2008 to 2012.

      The Marcum report shows that there is indeed something wrong with the patent system in the United States but it’s not excessive litigation or patent trolls. The real problem is the inability of patent owners to enforce their rights against infringers.

  4. Justin

    I thought corporate America was the root of all evil.

    https://prospect.org/labor/2024-12-09-why-workers-deserted-neoliberal-democratic-party/

    The immediate way to begin winning those workers back, she posited, will come “if Trump does the bidding of Big Tech, Big Oil and the billionaires who bankrolled his campaign” to betray those “who voted for him seeking lower costs and a better living standard.” To do that successfully, though, means that “Americans who care about our democracy have to recognize the needs of, and respect the agency of, low-income and middle-class Americans. This means breaking with decades of neoliberal, trickle-down economic policies.”

    This is all a bit incoherent.

  5. Bluto_Blutarski

    "Our regulatory environment is second in the world among large countries."

    Another way os saying this: only one country has fewer enironmental, consumer and employee protections, in which case.... we're the second worst in the world.

  6. Goosedat

    American minimum and median wage earners take pride knowing the US kicks ass on economic vitality and regulatory efficiency. Its all they got.

  7. Yikes

    Populism, is, of course, bullshit. However, if the question is how to win elections a troll can occasionally be correct. If the only problem with Kevin's graphs is that they are not widely disseminated, that could be fixed in a jiffy.

    But no, the problem is that the US had it really good for a very long time if you were sort of half-assed educated, anyone who looked at it could see that this was going to be, as they say "for a limited time only" and now that limited time is over, as we can't count on giant container ships being suddenly un-invented, nor can we could on the internet being un-invented, nor can we count on the rest of the first world (our competition) bombing itself into rubble, and finally, nor can we count on multinational corporations placing jobs where they are expensive rather than cheapest.

    The US was unique, and now it is not so unique. Any Dem candidate should be qualified based on how thoroughly and how loudly they can paint the Repubs as the enemy of the working class. Period. Its not as if the Repubs don't deserve the paintbrush.

    Somehow, Trump has effectively painted himself as a hero of the working class.

    1. Josef

      He's already back peddling on his tarrif claim and can't guarantee that prices won't go up with his tarrifs. He's a con man. Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to his life knows this.

  8. raphaeladidas

    All y'all are sleeping on that crazy outlying number of South Korean patent applications. What's going on there? How do the number of applications relate to granted patents?

  9. Chip Daniels

    The epic struggle in the 20th century was the battle between socialism and liberal capitalism, and liberal capitalism won decisively. The war is over.

    The optimum system of governance is regulated market economies with a robust social welfare system, all delivered within liberal democracy.

    There are no other systems which have shown any ability to deliver the results of prosperity and freedom. Every one of the top nations on all of those surveys have some variation of this, because it works.

  10. Anandakos

    Why is the UK's "84" shorter than our "84"? And, since the "leader of the pack" on "Business Regulation", South Korea, is also "84", why are we "tied for second" not "first"?

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