Originally published at: Here is the 2023 "Best Countries" list from US News and World Report | Boing Boing
…
2 Likes
This is even more stupid than most people would have predicted.
A country is “best” if it makes a lot of money and exerts certain kinds of power.
And if it’s easy to measure, they’re way more likely to measure it.
I’m not sure why I allow myself to get fooled so often by known entities pretending that they have insight when they rank things.
To determine the weight each subranking score had in the overall Best Countries score, most were correlated to 2022 gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita – a measure of inclusive prosperity comparable across countries – as reported by the World Bank. Subrankings that demonstrated a stronger relationship with the wealth category were weighted more heavily, and all weights were standardized to total 100.
The Movers subranking represents a version of the BAV tool’s BrandAsset Valuator Model of Brand Building, a metric that is predictive of a country’s future growth in terms of gross domestic product at purchasing power parity. It was correlated to GDP-PPP for 2027, as projected by the International Monetary Fund.
16 Likes
According to this stupid ranking, the UK is ‘better’ than Norway or France. I guess that’s true only so long as you don’t actually plan to live here.
I’d argue a ‘best’ rating should put heavy weight on the cost of education and healthcare to citizens as well as the state of the country’s infrastructure - but apparently my clapped out, delayed privatised train service and literally crumbling roads and hospitals, failing schools and university don’t mean anything.
Sucks to be you Norway with your free education and immaculate roads. Must be nearly as bad as being French and having to endure the blistering speed and efficiency of the TGV…
25 Likes
Just… nah.
10 Likes
Iran is last? Really? Of all the countries in the world? I mean, they have a horrible regime, but it’s a country just brimming with culture and nature and cuisine and history. I don’t know what makes a country “the best” but I do know one that isn’t the worst when I see it.
14 Likes
There are only 87 countries listed. It seems they left out more than half of them.
14 Likes
Where is Saudi Arabia on that list, because they are just as, if not MORE authoritarian than Iran… If they rated above Iran, that’s BS…
Also, the UAE is in the top 20, so yeah… So’s China, for that matter…
12 Likes
There is a reason a bunch of the top law schools in the US noped out of USNWR’s law school rankings last year. All of these rankings that publication does are suspect.
8 Likes
The rest of the developed world must be slipping if the US made it to number five. Or the criteria are total bullshit intended to give a country like the US a higher rank, and has nothing to do with quality of life for its citizens. Yeah, I’m thinking maybe it’s the latter…
That’s a pretty solid indicator that the rankings are bullshit, if ever there was one. Does one of the criteria amount to “we had an empire more recently”? Because that would explain some things…
9 Likes
Not sure how Switzerland came to be number one; I guess the flag’s a big plus.
11 Likes
No matter what they’re using to determine this, I’m surprised the USA is in the top 5. We’ve deteriorated so, so much so quickly.
2 Likes
… the genius factory that produced Trump & Musk?
8 Likes
If Wharton is involved; I’m skeptical of their metrics.
7 Likes
No, they used Imperial. 
6 Likes
US News and World Report hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as a bastion of groundbreaking and unbiased journalism, but this feels like one of those lazy articles that could have been filled out by AI.
3 Likes
This list is simply low effort clickbait garbage. It has about as much scientific rigor and utility as using the Yelp ratings for a city’s gas stations to rank its overall quality of life.
6 Likes
Kazakhstan is #84? But all other countries have inferior potassium.
This thing is rigged.
2 Likes
Woohoo!! Australia at number 4!
1 Like
1 Like
1 Like
