Avedon Carol, in a news trawl that also pointed out the shadow war between the dirty hippie bloggers and the MSM, notes that the U.S. is slipping in terms of technological innovation and has fallen to seventh in the world. The list of top seven innovators for 2006 (2005 rankings in parentheses) as reported in the BBC and measured by the World Economic Forum, who are clearly a bunch of dirty hippies themselves:
1: Denmark (3)
2: Sweden (8)
3: Singapore (2)
4: Finland (5)
5: Switzerland (9)
6: Netherlands (12)
7: US (1)
Well, great. Now let me throw a whole bunch of numbers your way. Here are the world's top 7 innovators for 2006 followed by their (population) and $GDP at the official exchange rate, as gathered by me from the CIA World Fact Book:
1: Denmark (5,450,661) $256.3 billion
2: Sweden (9,016,596) $371.5 billion
3: Singapore (4,492,150) $121.5 billion
4: Finland (5,231,372) $196.2 billion
5: Switzerland (7,523,934) $386.8 billion
6: Netherlands (16,491,461) $612.7 billion
7: US (298,444,215) $13.22 trillion
Let's make another list, this is fun. These are the top 7 U.S. cities in terms of GDP, listed with their (population) and $GDP, 2007 population and 2005 GDP from the City Mayors site. The number in front of the city names is their ranking among all the world's cities in terms of GDP:
2 New York (17,800,000) $1,133 billion
3 Los Angeles (11,789,000) $639 billion
4 Chicago (8,308,000) $460 billion
9 Philadelphia (5,149,000) $312 billion
10 Washington DC (3,934,000) $299 billion
11 Boston (4,032,000) $290 billion
12 Dallas/Fort Worth (4,146,000) $268 billion
Shorter whole bunch of numbers: This is like the Roman Empire at its zenith getting its technology innovation buttocks handed to it by Athens.
Shorter shorter whole bunch of numbers: This is George W. Bush's intellectual legacy.