The top five countries on this list are all European countries, with the top four out of five all being Nordic countries. Apparently, the Nordics and Europeans in general are the most prosperous and the best places to live. An even closer look at the list shows the top 15 countries on the list being countries that are dominated by caucasians with the primary religion being that of Christianity. These results raise a "red flag" for me. Why is it that the results could be so tilted towards European countries or countries of European influence in their founding? My guess is that the criteria for the rankings are based off of western values and principles, thus skewing the results. So, I took a further look into the criteria.
Here is a list of the criteria used in the Legatum Group study.
- Economic Fundamentals
- Entrepreneurship and Innovation
- Democratic Institutions
- Education
- Health
- Safety & Security
- Governance
- Personal Freedom
- Social Capital
These seem to be fairly reasonable categories to measure prosperity, but prosperity only. But studies like these eventually lead to statements like... "Now, let’s hear all the reasons that USA can’t adopt a Scandinavian system, even though those countries have reportedly the best quality of life of any country on the planet." , from The Book Blog, who recently has been supplying me with most of my blog topics. It's a great analytical baseball site, but when it begins venturing into political or societal topics it is no better than the local barber shop talk, and in many cases much worse.
I believe that quality of life, prosperity or whatever you are using as the yardstick to rank a best place to live (city, state or country), is cultural dependent. A group like the Legatum which is based in a western country and that does many studies using western cultural standards as its measuring tool, is almost always going to have skewed results showing countries most similar to their cultural values at the top of the list.
To me, there is "no way" that a global power like China should ever be ranked #75, behind countries like Jamaica, Mongolia, Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua or Venezuela on any "prosperity" list, that just doesn't pass the "sniff" test. A further look into some of the findings for China and it appears that the Legatum Group did not take the time to finish their homework. Instead of looking at empirical data, like they did with many of the western countries (countries Legatum is more familiar with), they based many of their findings in China off of "expert estimates". I don't even want to take a stab at what an expert estimate is. Having read some of their expert and even non expert findings, I am not too impressed. As an example, one of the areas that China is hammered hard on is the lack of access to the internet. The study quotes the following, "There are only 56 personal computers per 1,000 citizens, indicating that the general populace does not have widespread access." Perhaps if their so called experts had actually stepped foot in China they would see that yes, not too many Chinese people have computers or internet access at home, Internet Cafes are widespread throughout every Chinese city. One does not need to own a computer to have access to the internet.
The USA is hammered in this study for it's health. Not because people are not healthy, not because we don't have good hospitals, doctors, nurses or surgeons, but because our health care system is inefficient. While the USA is hammered for its health care system, European countries are lauded. Kind of a coincidence that this came out at the same time that the US Congress and President are trying to pass legislation on health care reform. This European "think tank" is coming to the roundabout conclusion that if the US were to reform its health care system to look more like the European systems, we'd be a more prosperous country. I am not one who believes that bigger government is the answer to our health care system problems, or any problems that our country may have at all. I believe in just enough regulation to put a lid on as much waste and fraud as possible and then to help out those few who are unable to care for themselves and that's it.
One could easily interpret many of the findings in this study extremely different. For example, which country is it that most people in the world would like to immigrate to? USA. Which country do most foreigners wish to go overseas to study at? USA, UK, France. You rarely hear of an overseas student wishing he or she could go overseas to live or study in Finland. When a very sick and wealthy foreign dignitary looks to find that best medical practitioner where do they most often go to? USA. Which countries have the best math and science test scores? It is usually an Asian country. Where can one find the best museums in the world? Certainly not in Finland or Sweden. I think one would travel to France, Italy, USA, Taiwan, China, India, Greece, Colombia, Peru or UK for that. Where is the category for natural resources, why isn't the military given a higher wait, or influence for being a permanent member of the UN Security Council???
If a study were done by a Japanese or Chinese "think tank", I am sure we would be looking at completely different results. When you base so much of your measurements off of cultural ways of governing, business, health care or education you are going to get very skewed results, which is what this study has come up with. The Legatum Group study is nothing more than entertainment. To be taken more serious, a set of more cultural independent criteria needs to be taken into consideration. I could come up with a similar ranking by taking all of the "light colored skin" western countries, then rank them by which ones are the most ethnically homogeneous. My formula is a lot less complicated, a lot less costly to run, and yet yields nearly the same results. :)