Which governments are doing how well over the past four years

I started reading Phillips OBrien for his coverage of the Ukrainian Russian war at the beginning of this year and his was useful commentary.  Over time he has begun to cover that war less and has reverted to complaining about the economic mismanagement of Britain, how stupid was Brexit, how cognitively challenged are the Conservative Party in Britain, and, paradoxically what a catastrophe was Trump in the US.  In other words, the bog standard mainstream media complaints of a left-leaning putative intellectual or academic.

Today there was this snarky tweet.

Quite possibly true, but also pathetic that this story needed to be published. Says much more about the weakened U.K. than anything else https://t.co/rSqIYNCBQ5

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) December 28, 2022

He is responding to an article in The Spectator, All is not well in Macron’s France by John Keiger.  

Keiger is arguing that the French elite are more patriotic than the British elite but have less to be patriotic about based on a range of socioeconomic metrics.  It is not a comprehensive empirical critique either in terms of time frame or in terms of completeness of the range of socioeconomic measures.  But Keiger does adduce a range of facts that would support his argument.  

OBrien gets some pushback, to which he replies:

Because it’s not trying to find out what’s happening in France. It’s cherry picking some disparate, pieces of evidence to try and make British readers feel better about the mess this country is in. Why GDP in 2021 and not GDP per capita in 2022 (France richer that way)?

Which isn't a particularly reasoned or evidentiary response.  It is a mere allegation.  By  my count, Keiger references eight socioeconometric measures.  While that is not comprehensive, they are fairly wide ranging (GDP, growth, inflation, unemployment, crime, etc.).  Wide-ranging enough to call into question the accusation of cherry-picking.  It is also notable that Keiger includes one metric that is inconsistent with his argument and he acknowledges that inconsistency - a further tell against cherry-picking.

I think Keiger's piece is not well thought out, particularly for the conclusion he draws.  But that has nothing to do with OBrien's critique.  

I have been reading OBrien's complaints about Brexit all year.  For whatever reason, this was the tweet that made me think, Brexit occurred January 1, 2020.  Just how bad has the UK done since January 2020, compared to any of the other big OECD or international countries.  Brexit occurred, but so did the global Covid-19 pandemic panic with innumerable economic consequences.  Was Brexit a notable issue?  Was it more about general economic competence?  Or was it mostly about the government response to the pandemic?  Alot has been going on since January 2020.  If Brexit was a terrible decision and the Tories mismanaged the response to Covid, then you would expect to see that in the GDP growth figures.  Britain ought to be doing materially worse, given OBrien's critique than other OECD countries.  

Keeping it very simple and not knowing in advance what the lineup would look like, I went to Statista for consistent numbers and got the annual economic growth rates for the UK, German, Sweden, Italy, Sweden, China and Japan.  A single but standard metric for one of the most important socioeconometric measures of all.  The average four year growth rates (2019-2022) for ten OECD countries are:

Europe 

Britain - 0.6% growth

France - 0.8%

Germany - 0.4%

Italy - 0.3%

Netherlands - 1.9%

Sweden - 1.9%

 

Asia

China - 3.0%

Japan - (-)0.2% 

South Korea - 1.8% 

North America 

USA - 2.0%

Rank ordering them from best to worst:

China - 3.0% growth

USA - 2.0% 

Netherlands - 1.9%

Sweden - 1.9% 

South Korea - 1.8% 

France - 0.8% 

Britain - 0.6%

Germany - 0.4%

Italy - 0.3%

Japan - (-)0.2% shrinkage

 

Obviously GDP growth isn't the only pertinent sociometric measure of success.  I would be inclined to discard China's number because there is so little confidence in their reporting.  You might be inclined to discard the US results owing to it having the advantage of being the global reserve currency.  

 

But regardless if you discard either, if you are looking for a strong signal that either Brexit was a mistake or that the Conservatives are  uniquely bad at creating good economic conditions, it simply isn't there based on annual GDP growth.  

Britain's results are respectable within the context of the big OECD economies as well as in comparison to the biggest global economies (China, US, Japan, Germany).

This analysis casts light as well on the relative strength of the US economy where there is some mystery lurking.  There are many reasons to regard the current administration as being distinctly economically incompetent.  It has significantly worsened immigration, significantly worsened inflation, significantly worsened the stock markets, had a distinctly damaging response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and constantly flirts with major logistics catastrophes.

One would expect, under normal circumstances to see the consequent high inflation, labor force shortages, wealth erosion on a generational scale, and comparatively high interest rates to all lead to very low economic growth.  Those are a lot of negative economic winds.  But across the four years since 2019 just before the pandemic, the US economy has produced the best global result other than the suspect number from China.  Nearly an average of 4.5% growth between 2021 and 2022.  

Our increase of the national debt by nearly fifteen percent and $3.2 trillion is obviously part of the answer.  But all of the answer?  I am not so sure.

I suspect that the global four year average of 2.0%, better than all the other OECD countries, is a testament to the underlying strength and diversity of the American system.  As Adam Smith said, "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation."   

Obviously we don't want to just survive any given bad administration, we want to return to competent governance.  But compared to everywhere else in the past couple of years, we aren't doing as badly as it seems nor as badly as the Administration's policies would lead us to expect.