IMO, The US has crumbling infrastructure, corrupt government, dangerous cities, and a lot of homelessness, among so many other problems. Hell, millions of people in the US don’t even have power right now.
What’s the difference?
If you mean “developped” vs “develloping”.
The HDI of the US is significantly lower than canada or northern europe, but still much higher than the world average.
Here’s an Inequality Adjusted version of the Human Development index, the US comes 27th, below Estonia and Cyprus, but 27th out of nearly 200 is counted as “develloped”.
Also, the “developed” vs. “developing” terminology doesn’t really have a category that fits a country that was previously developed and is now declining.
Neoliberal hubris
Have you ever lived in an actual third world country? Here’s some from my home country for each of your examples:
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Corruption in government is worse and more blatant than what you see in the US. It happens at the top all the way down to the lowest levels. You sometimes have to bribe people just to get some services done. I once had to have a police report done for an auto accident. The officer had the report typed up and they just needed to click the print button. He then said I can pay a quick process “fee” to get the report now, or come back to get the report in 3 days. It was an hour drive to the station, but I didn’t want to pay a bribe, so I came back after 3 days.
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Infrastructure is crumbling not just because of lack of maintenance, but because the cheapest materials are used and infrastructure is not built up to code. Every step of the process means a cut for someone’s own pockets, so you end up with a tiny amount compared to what was initially funded. Perfectly functioning roads are destroyed and rebuilt in perpetuity because contractors are in cahoots with local government to implement “projects” where they fleece funds by agreeing on a budget then switching materials to substandard quality and pocketing the remaining amount, with the politician getting a % of course. A section of the street in my childhood home is still unpaved 30+ years later just because no one bothered to finish it.
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Homeless people in the US may still have access to food banks, shelters, charities, etc. Homeless people in thrid world countries may have nothing at all.
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People lose power in the US due to catastrophies. We had random 12 hour blackouts and water shut-offs several times a month for no reason at all. Water isn’t potable in the entire country and you have to boil or buy water from filter stations if you want to be safe.
You’ve doctored your first two points to avoid the fact that widespread corruption and crumbling infrastructure are in fact a feature of the USA. That said, obviously we are not a ‘third world’ country, nor a ‘developing or under-developed’ country. We are, instead in our own special category of fucked. We have an absolutely giant economy, but as we have decided politically to disinvest in all of our public sectors, either by privatization or under-funding, we are rapidly becoming dysfunctional. Add to that the huge global reclaiming of surplus value from workers wages to plutocrats profits, and we are, as is obvious, in a political crisis shared by the rest of the neoliberal democracies.
Love the privilege on display
Americans want to be from a third world country so bad
Nope, my first two points did not change from my edits. I never said corruption or crumbling infrastructure isn’t widespread in the US. I just said that not only do both exist in third world countries as well, but it’s even worse.
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The Gucci belt
Add political violence to your list.
Because the majority of old people are rich and there are still the echoes of a real middle class. Let’s see if Trump gets elected and everyone with the cash to do so flees his outrageous proposed tariffs.
Because of very high GDP per capita. It’s another discussion whether GDP is a reliable measure of economy output.
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The US usually ranks 25-50 on world corruption indices. Third world countries rank 100-200.
That would mean that the US is more corrupt. I’m pretty sure that’s not what you meant, so I’m just adding this to help.
I don’t know if it’s a language thing or a regional thing (or just a regular mistake), but “rank” usually means that 1 is the most, 2 is the second most, and 100th would be less corrupt than 1, 2, etc.
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You’re right, they’ve ordered it that way, but they’ve specified that their scale is…
[scored] on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean)
So you weren’t wrong about what you read.
But without that context there, being “in the top ten of a corruption ranking” would usually mean the country is very corrupt, haha
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Yes, the scale they used was just a bit counter-intuitive.
It wasn’t a rank from most to least corrupt, it was more of a “corruption score”, where higher numbers means more corrupt. But they ordered it like ranks, so #1 (least corrupt) would be first.
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https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1629536?v=pdf UN report from 2018 so pre-pandemic.
Because “first world” means NATO, not having a high standard of living.
Because the original concept of “ordinal world country” came out of the Cold War:
- “first world” was US/Western affiliated/allied
- “second world” was USSR affiliated/allied
- ”third world” just meant “none of the above” for a very long time
However, since then, understanding of the term in popular discourse has somewhat shifted from geopolitical affiliation to a vague amalgam of socioeconomic status/GDP/“are you a pariah state”/etc.
On a less serious note: the US is really just several dozen 3rd world countries in a trenchcoat essentially relying on (but also politically backstabbing) the economic product of like 5 or 6 states that could be first world economies in their own right
Several reasons.
- The US is largely responsible for defining what 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World countries are.
- It has the largest economy in the world.
(I think? That may have gone to China by now. Not sure. But it was true recently.) - Even with everything you said being true. It’s still the wealthiest country in the world, by a large margin. Epically when you compare incomes, lifestyles, and infrastructure to actual 3rd world countries. It’s not even close.
Looks like the USA is still about $10 trillion higher in GDP than China.
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Because of their modern and huge airforce and army, along with all the big tech companies, and Hollywood.
The PR image of America is quite nice. The reality, not that great.
TIL: Way too many people think it’s still the Cold War. Language changes people.
Yup, it does change. It was attempted to mean “poor” and it’s been reappropriated since
If you’re trying to use modern language, it’s “developed” and “developing”
You mean global north/ global south.
Developing and developed are considered negatively.
But in terms of laypeople words, that are used every day, 1st and 3rd world mean the same thing.
North/south imply certain regions can’t improve and is far worse than developed/developing
If layperson words didn’t have an issue with 1st/3rd world, you wouldn’t see so many comments about it
Language changes people.
In what ways are people changed by language?
Did you figure it out yet?
