Newsweek's "Best Countries" Ranking: A Poor Joke.

I’ve seen dumb lists before, but the one recently published in Newsweek, ranking the “World's Best Countries,” certainly “takes the cake.”


In a way, you almost feel sorry for Newsweek. We all know that the magazine has been “up against it” lately. In fact, the owners of the venerable periodical announced, just three weeks ago, that it had reached an agreement to sell the magazine, effective next month, to Sidney Harman, who made his millions in the audio equipment business. (You remember Harmon-Kardon stereo sets? Same guy.)


This came about after the magazine dropped from 3.2 million to 1.5 million subscribers, and after it reported a $47.5 million operating loss in 2009.


It appears that, in one more effort at reviving its fading fortunes, Newsweek decided to “swing for the roof,” and create its first-time-ever “World’s Best Countries” ranking.


After all, the editors must have thought, “U.S. News and World Report” seems to be doing well with its strategy of publishing U.S. college, university and healthcare rankings. How can we lose if we develop our own ranking of the entire world?"


If Newsweek had taken its “World’s Best Countries” project a bit more seriously, if their editors had made just a modest effort to develop the new ranking without the highly political, substantially subjective, European-skewed criteria they obviously used, maybe the “world” would have taken their product seriously.


But, in my opinion, they didn’t do any of that and they clearly blew it.


I found Newsweek’s “Best Countries” ranking no more credible than the steady stream of other nonsensical, gimmicky lists that seem to be published at least once a week, by other desperate media outlets, in a vain attempt to attract “eyeballs.”


In recent years, for example, there have been published rankings of: “The Top 10 Dumbest Pet Products” list, the “Top 10 College Drop Outs,” (almost interesting because Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Avatar director James Cameron, Harrison Ford and Tiger Woods all made the list), the “Top 10 Screen Vampires” and the “Top 10 Angry Comedians.”


Like David Letterman’s far-funnier trademark “Top 10 List” routine, these rankings hold our interest for only a minute or so. That happens because, very much like the Letterman “bit,” we see them as comic relief, a “mental health break” before we move back to the things we have to do every day to earn a living.


I felt that way about the Top 100 “Best Countries ranking,” by Newsweek.


Intentionally or unintentionally, it was clearly a joke.


The project’s advisory board included A Nobel laureate economist, the director of McGill University’s Institute of Health and Social Policy, the director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia and, most importantly and revealingly, two high-ranking representatives of McKinsey and Co., the world’s largest management consulting firm.


On the surface, such a group would appear to be credible, until you realize that McKinsey, a $6 billion company, has a client list that includes 90 of the world’s leading, global corporations and more than 35 (nearly one in every six) of the world’s countries. Do you think the interests of their clients might have been factored into the final rankings and the discussions about who made the list in the first place? You think?


Why else would a ranking of the “World’s 100 Best Countries” include every single European Union nation, but exclude 67 percent of the countries in Africa, altogether?


How would 15 of the Top 25 Best Countries be drawn from the ranks of the European Union, including Greece, (#26), Spain (#21), Ireland (#17) and the United Kingdom (#14), each of which is in imminent danger of being declared financially insolvent? How did any of these countries make the list, in the first place?


Without a strong political “tweak” of the data, how would Israel wind up at #22, overall, and be listed as the “Best Country” among all of the 14 countries classified as “Middle East / North Africa”? Aside from purely political considerations, why else did Newsweek rate Israel as “better” than Kuwait (#40), oil-rich Saudi Arabia (#64), and Iran (#79), among others?


Why, other than lingering colonialist attitudes, does the report include Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, four countries located squarely on the African continent, together with “Middle East” countries? Is it geographic proximity to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria that has led political consultants such as McKinsey to continue to “lump” Northern Africa into the Middle East?


Can’t be.


If that were the case, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, all located within 200 miles or less across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, would, logically, be considered Middle Eastern Countries, also. For the world’s sake, and all of our collective sanity, let’s hope that those countries being “relegated” to “African” rather than “Middle East” status had nothing to do with the darker complexion of their inhabitants.


By the way, Spain is less than 50 miles from African Morocco. At a certain point, should Spain, also, be considered a Middle Eastern country, or a part of Northern Africa?? Who decides these things, anyway?


Subjective….totally subjective…so much so, as to be humorous.


If Newsweek and its consultants at McKinsey weren’t trying to be funny, or to simply reinforce well-worn, negative global stereotypes, why were the 14 “sub-Saharan” African Nations all placed within the last 21 places in the rankings – from 80 to 100?


Wait, it gets better…in developing its rationale for the U.S. to be ranked as high as #11, even in the midst of one of its very deepest economic crises, Newsweek clearly used inflated, misleading data to improve the case for that ranking.


Even though a 2006 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education disclosed that 46 – 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the poverty level, the U.S. literacy rate used in the “Best Countries” calculation was the highly inaccurate 99 percent, the one drawn from the CIA World Fact book.


There's more...even though the U.S. Census Bureau lists the average per-capita income in the U.S. at $33,070, Newsweek’s #11 ranking for the U.S. was arrived at by using a per-capita income level of $47,200. Why?


Finally, it was very interesting to see which of the world’s total of 194 countries were left off the Newsweek list entirely, in order to get down to the “100 Best.” That unranked group of 94 countries included, of course, a significant number of Central and South East Asian, Middle Eastern and Caribbean countries, and 36 African nations, such as Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.


Even more glaring, why was China, the world’s second-largest economy, ranked #59, Brazil ranked #58, India #78 and Russia #51? Aren’t those "BRIC Nations" the emerging global economic players? By whose strange logic at Newsweek do these clearly powerful G-20 players rank below Latvia, Costa Rica, Poland, Slovenia and Newsweek’s #1, Finland?


Was Newsweek’s entire “Best Countries” announcement all just one more dumb “David Letterman Top 10 List” joke, or were the magazine’s editors simply trying to re-affirm the outdated, Western, global management policy that “if we say so, it must be true?”


When are we in the U.S., and in the entire West, going to finally take our heads out of the sand?


When are we going to start to use accurate, comparable data sets to arrive at more honest analyses of our true, economic and military condition? When are we going to understand that if we don’t recognize the underlying reasons for the loss of our economic, quality-of-life and military advantages, then we won’t really be able to address them, or to retain the U.S.’s world leadership?


When I finally stopped laughing at Newsweek's "Best Countries" list, I began to worry that our country and its formerly all-powerful opinion - making apparatus has gotten so far off track that we may not recover in time to prevent the inevitable crash.


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