U.S. remains #1 in 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook -- The U.S. isn't falling behind

The 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook just came out and the U.S. is ranked #1 in world competitiveness again -- for the fourteenth year in a row.

• This ranking by the Swiss IMD is the third major, world-respected, independent ranking that concluded the U.S. is not falling behind the rest of the world in competitiveness.
• These three different independent assessments are in stark contrast to broadband critics' call for abandonment of free-market competition policies in favor of a more regulatory broadband industrial policy. 
  • In November 2007, the U.S. ranked #1 in the World Economic Forum's Global competitiveness Report for 2007-2008.
  • Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Digital Rankings had the U.S. tied for second in the world.

Bottom line: Pro net neutrality and pro-regulation proponents love to jump on isolated data or studies like the OECD broadband rankings to justify a reversal of free-market competition policies in favor of more command and control government industrial policies.

However, facts are pesky things.

• The pro-regulation crowd hasn't even begun to make the case that the U.S. is actually falling behind the rest of the world, and has said virtually nothing that would justify a 180 degree reversal of current successful free market policies.

The Internet is the greatest free-market success story of all time.

• New Internet regulation in the name of bogus competitiveness decline claims would kill the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.