singapore ranked below india. would you choose prosperity
or freedom with pverty? china is alos ranked below but chine is
economically stronger also llifted more people out of pverty.
Yes but Murs on reflection, whilst working with the data I couldn't help thinking there's "lies, damn lies and then there's statistics"
The term Democracy, as far as I am concerned is being misused by the Audit, it's not really a quantifiable process. It simply exists or it doesn’t.
I think a more productive use of these data would be to simplify the quantifiable aspects (Economic Freedom, Education, Population Demographics, Religion, etc) and attempt to gain correlations in order to actually say something qualitatively about any particular country i.e. does the strength of democracy have an impact at all? Is Russia any more economically stable after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Why do economic super cities exist along the Eastern Coast of China?
However, given a large enough set of uncertain variables a plot can be drawn to support two diametrically opposed arguments, I’m sure.
Finally, would love to get my hands on more data to start to look at more quantifiable aspects of nations and get a discussion going.
Additionally, terms like ‘Press Freedom’ (is the press free in the US to fundamentally disagree with the so called war on terror?) and corruption (dollar for dollar is the corruption in Italy greater than that in Bangaladesh?…probably) need revising.