National competitiveness: a dangerous obcession?

Paul Krugman said once that governments shouldn't try to chase competitiveness goals. And why? Because looking to national competitiveness it's simply wrong. Competitiveness is a word usually used in management theory, when we want to define how a firm as a better performance than its rivals. Competitiveness is measured by sales growth, market shares or profit, but can we apply these measures to countries? It is correct to say that the main goal of economic policy is increasing national exports or increasing GDP?

What is the main goal of economic policies? Sure that is not just increasing national exports! But can we talk about national competitiveness as a war between countries to capture world resources like talent people, financial capital or foreign investment?

The World Economic Forum defines national competitiveness as the changing rate in productivity. If productivity increases, a country reinforced its competitiveness. The opposite it's true too. There are other measures when we talk about competitiveness which we can use, but I think that the vision of Paul Krugman is wrong.

Krugman said that talking about national competitiveness is just a political fashion, but I think that Krugman forgets one simple point: countries do compete in global market. And the reason why is because countries are competing not just for human resources or global market share... but they are fighting for survival. Western economies are struggling. The western societies are ageing, and their economies are heavily indebted. Today, the social protection system is a burden to european governments because the lack of young people will stop the funding of one of the most oldest Ponzi schemes in the all world. At european countries, young people fund the social pensions of the oldest ones, which constitutes a severe intra-generational conflict.

So, if countries not pursue a competitiveness goal, how these economies will fight for their own survival? If a nation don't increase its exports, or if economic growth don't happens, people will migrate and every internal markets will colapse. So, it is wrong to talk about national competitiveness? Countries need to pursue better living standards! If they don't... economies will fail. It's the Darwin's natural selection theory applied to economics. Don't you believe in it?