>>10483
>>10484
Seeing how neither the US nor Israel are true democracies it just goes to show that the whole thing is irrelevant and it is bowing down to the "good guys" that elevates certain gulf states, doesn't it.
>I can say you would rather live in Ireland than the orange and red counties.
That is up for debate considering China is in the orange and for a young person there are just more opportunities there. If we were to take culture, ideology and race out of the question, focusing only on the economic side of things and the goal were to earn money, live without having to worry about being on time with the rent, start a family and I would rather move there than to Ireland. It is just more promising.
Had the same digital dystopia future with total surveillance and control over each person's expenditures not been looming over the rest of the world, the choice would've probably been different but the West is not resisting this course, it's simply lagging behind.
Anyhow, the colors in the graph are chosen based on the "economic freedom" and not gdp (not even adjusted for purchasing parity, yikes), so that warranted a closer look and I looked up the source of the graph. They use metrics such as "how easy it is to trade with other countries" or "how stable the currency is". Despite clothing and furbishing the entire world, China is ranked very low in the first category; perhaps they should adjust these metrics to account how strong citizens of each country are because in order to overcome such disadvantages and break through all the barriers Chinese merchants must be quite powerful indeed. #1 country in the "stable currency" category is.. Japan. The same Japan that is suffering from wage deprecation, with yen sliding against dollar, with the US having had to bail them out this summer, ha.
Overall the whole paper seems about as trustworthy at that "world press freedom rating" or whichever it was. They have their metrics, sure, but whether these metrics are adequate and also properly matched against each other (see also: HDI allowing for getting a high score despite performing abysmally in one criteria due to performing well in the other two).
The paper is authored by a bunch of dudes with surnames that don't raise concerns, sure, but one supposedly represents "Center for Freedom and Prosperity". The name seemed cringe enough to warrant a closer look.
>The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CFP or CF&P) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for flat taxes, territorial taxation systems, and offshore tax havens.[2] The organization and its subsidiary, Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (a tax-exempt organization), publish studies and conduct seminars analyzing the benefits of jurisdictional tax competition, financial privacy and fiscal sovereignty.
These are probably the real metrics against which the countries in that list are measured. Whether conforming to them is the golden goose or not is, again, up for debate because surely there will be economists who have other points of view.
Read the