U.S.A. No Longer Best Place On Earth

U.S.A. No Longer Best Place On Earth (Never Was)

on’t blame Obama.  Though I’m sure 12 guys with a story to sell in an office somewhere near Virginia will do just that.  But, sadly, it took 25 years to strip the U.S. from being the best place on earth to be born.  Now, we are sweet 16!
According to the “Where to be Born” index by The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit, the U.S. is tied with Germany and trails smaller, more homogeneous countries like Taiwan, Singapore, and all the way at number one, Switzerland.
Does it matter where your born? It most certainly does. At least as much as when you were born there.  A guy like Cornelius Vanderbilt wouldn’t have become a shipping magnate and have been able to build The Breakers in Newport, RI, if he was born today, or born in Australia, which now ranks far ahead of the U.S. at number two.  That’s because back in the 1890s, there were no shipping lanes. There was no such thing as the Staten Island Ferry.  Vanderbilt built it.  For him, it mattered where he was born.  Sure, at least one of the Google founders, Sergey Brin, was born in Russia in 1973, ranked number 21 back in ’88. But Brin moved to the U.S. around 1980 and has been here ever since. If he stayed in Russia, he would have missed the dot-com boom that helped spawn Google in…1988…and fund Google in an IPO in 2004.
So, having said that, yes, it does matter where you were born and when.

Click to enlarge. The 2013 Where to be Born index by The Economist Intelligence Unit.

And Americans born today will have less opportunities and chances for greatness, in theory, than 15 other countries. Ironically, most of them are in Europe. Not ironically, only one, The Netherlands, is in the top 10 and uses the euro as its currency.
The Nordic countries are the place to be. Don’t let Nokia’s woes fool you on Finland. Think of Finland as the land of Rovio’s Angry Birds!
Then there’s the crisis-ridden south of Europe lagging behind despite the advantage of a warmer climate. Italy is 21; Spain 28 and Portugal 30.  Greece is 34.  Better off being born in the rich United Arab Emirates.
The largest European economies of Germany, France and Britain do not do particularly well.  And us here in America, where babies will inherit the large debts of the peace-n-love Woodstock generation, are now “worse off” than our English speaking friends in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia.
Lastly, despite their newfound growth, none of the big four emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) scores impressively. Brazil is far and away the best of the BRICs, ranked at number 37, roughly on par with oil rich Saudi Arabia. Among the 80 countries covered, no one wants to be born in Nigeria. That African nation comes in as the worst place on earth to be born in 2013.