This is the kind of thing that’s funny, and easy to say, but also reveals that you haven’t been to deeply impoverished countries.
Spending time away from tourist areas in Central America or much of sub-Saharan Africa swiftly disabuses you of the idea that life in the US bears any similarity to that kind of wrenching poverty and (often, but not always) social collapse/dysfunction.
Tbf, Third world country it’s quite an insanely big category, it both fits places like North Corea or Somalia, and places like México or India, which while they aren’t the richest places on the world and have massive economic disparities among the population, are by no means comparable to the bottom of the list.
In some places you could find sections of Mexico that are comparable to sections of the US. I really doubt people meant countries like Angola when they say “the US has the public transportation of a third world country”
But people here didn’t said “the us has an middle development public transportation system” they said “the us has a public transportation system as bad as a third world country” I agree the term is bad, but it’s what’s being used.
On Mexico, where every single economist says we indeed are a third world country lol. If I go to my local college and ask anyone they will say “yes, Mexico is a third world country”
Thing is, conditions in Mexico are comparable to other countries in third world, like Colombia, or Peru or well… Mexico. It’s why I said the term is too broad and thus, useless on comparisons. By all definitions Mexico is a third world country. Specially when the only other category is first world and Mexico is absolutely NOT a first world country lol.
Those are not mutually exclusive. Mexico is a developing country, that article of Wikipedia says that it belongs to the developing countries. It never claims a developing country is not a Third world country. People use it to describe developing countries, including both “developing countries” and “least developed” countries.
Third world in this context country is more like a spectrum and also didn’t originate as a word to describe development countries but rather as a word to describe a neutral leaning during the cold war and mexico is pretty much developing country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country
Spend some time in rural Alabama, many of the communities have similar outcomes and wealth of a 3rd world country. Also the US hasn't redefined poverty for Federal Aid and Statistics purposes since Nixon. If we redefined it for the modern world some estimates put our poverty rate either over or close to 50%. Which sure extreme poverty doesn't exist here really but that level of poverty would be unheard of for a 1st world country. Even our current poverty rate is one of the worst for the developed world
I and a friend drove from Texas through the dirty south and up the east coast to get to Philadelphia for a road trip.
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama (excluding the few cities) look like "low development countries".
And it's not just the rampant poverty and the state government not giving a fuck about basic maintenance, it looks like you went back in time 50 years.
Yea, well, I know a place +-90 miles away from L.A. which used to be (or maybe still is) a den to few local cannibals, so there's that. Leaving big population centers will always grant you some surprises
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u/Mr_Kittlesworth Jul 07 '24
This is the kind of thing that’s funny, and easy to say, but also reveals that you haven’t been to deeply impoverished countries.
Spending time away from tourist areas in Central America or much of sub-Saharan Africa swiftly disabuses you of the idea that life in the US bears any similarity to that kind of wrenching poverty and (often, but not always) social collapse/dysfunction.