‘Friendly’ competition … Albo’s offside with ‘on your side’

It’s not a competition We’re great fans of competitiveness indexes at Crikey — those “reports” produced by neoliberal think tanks purporting to analyse the “global competitiveness” of economies and, invariably, urge fewer labour protections, less environmental regulation, and lower corporate taxes.

Having been invented by the World Economic Forum, they’ve proliferated to such an extent you need a guide to them (which we’ve happily provided). These analyses, while pretending to intellectual rigour, are just surveys of corporate executives, kleptocrats and oligarchs from around the world.

But luckily Australia’s own neoliberal talkshop, CEDA, has shared the link to the survey for the forthcoming “World Competitiveness Yearbook” (a sort of Aldi World Economic Forum) which will “assess the performance of 64 economies based on more than 330 criteria”.