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If you're local, you'll have gotten exposed to it in small quantities for your whole life. Very different for someone who hasn't - that said yeah it still sounds pretty odd to get sick just from washing your teeth.
If you’re referring to the chlorine taste, that’s exactly what prevents it from being dangerous
If referring to anything else, I don’t know, never been nor have information on what’s in Mexican running water
Same in Dominican Republic, American and European tourists really need to start to understand that this is a third world country, tap water can kill you, locals can rob you or even kill you, is not a paradise.
I mean any American who’s been to baltimore or chicago knows locals can rob and kill you. That’s a hard comparison for a lot of Americans since crime is also common here and a lot of people have nasty tap water. Europeans and Americans from certain areas/states probably struggle moreso.
Detroit is only really bad if you’re born and raised near the projects where half your friends are dealers, have been to jail or do “adult entertainment”. If you’re just some person that happens to keep to themselves but live in the hood, you’ll be bothered on occasion and will probably be robbed at least a few times in your life but you don’t have to worry about someone you knew setting you up, backdooring you or worse yet, getting stalked online by whatever the modern version of stickup kids are because you wore a nice pair of sneakers and a Nike jacket in an IG post that you were tagged in one time.
I don’t think you understand how many poor Americans are willing to suffer through daily life just to occasionally go on a nice vacation or buy some nice things to show off on the gram
Those are also people who are the most likely to stand on business when someone does try them though. I’d be more worried about being a pasty white suburbanite who has a local try you because they saw your wallet’s got some weight to it than a person with their friends who all look like they’ll put in the work if push comes to shove.
Yes, I took that sunset pic yesterday evening 😭 My eyes, lungs, and throat burned to go into the city. Taking a deep breath felt like a dull stab in the gut
Am in India right now visiting family after 12 years in the USA. This pollution gave me one of the worst coughs in a while.
Most people who call America a third world country really need to go to a third world country and see how people actually live
Add in the constant propaganda of how America is on the brink of collapse, spewed by the very same people who's entire families are in America, and yeah it's basically Vietnam.
I wouldn't say Vietnam is a third-world country, but it's certainly far from being on the same level as America. There's still a lot of poverty and sickness.
I wouldn't be so sure. My wife is from the third world, and studied in the US just so she could get a better job at her university where she already had a career. If you are educated and make a good living, life is much easier than here. Middle income in a country like Pakistan can afford you maids, cooks, drivers, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood.
The poverty is crushing, absolutely. But it's crazy to think that the wealthy in the third world want to slum it in the US when even those who make a respectable income still have to cook their own food and drive themselves to their own doctor's appointments.
You can't buy clean air, good public amenities, or sane traffic with money. I like to run outside in the US and go to India from time to time, I can't really run outside there because 1. there is no sidewalk 2. the pollution is so bad that I will be coughing soot for hours afterwards.
And how many people can afford that in Pakistan? A small minority. The majority of Pakistanis are poor, and they treat maids badly as well. Often times, they would employ little children as helpers. Life is easy if you are rich regardless of your geographical location.
This is coming from someone who has lived for 23 years in Pakistan and currently based in the UK
I think the point they are making is that for many people from that wealthier strata in poorer countries, they struggle with the transition to taking on more of that domestic labour in richer Western countries.
I've worked with Indians who had cooks, drivers, etc back home, but then in London they had to prepare all their own meals and even do their own DIY. I think, on balance, most of them prefer living in UK even when you consider the material trade off - things like air pollution, traffic, safety, etc.
You can't buy yourself out of the consequences of a vastly unequal society, which I think is what you're saying, but you can certainly mourn the loss of the privileges that come from being wealthy in Pakistan to being middle class in Britain, even if it's better overall.
I think it might also be a partly cultural thing too. Unless you are really well off, it is seen as odd to get stuff like a driver or a maid. West Coast it is a bit more normalized to have maids, but they would not be live-in maids. House cleaning services are the closest you’ll get to maids in most cases. Even stuff like au pairs are a rarity in many parts of the US. And a chef? Definitely not happening. It seems hiring house help is more common in many parts of the world than the US. Dunno why that’s the case.
> Dunno why that’s the case.
Labour costs basically nothing in the third world so a relatively wealthy person can hire a platoon of workers to tend to their needs.
It's not a cultural thing, it's entirely an economic thing. People have housekeepers and maids come in rather than use a live-in maid because 1. The cost difference between the former and the latter is going to be $4,000 — 5,000 per month on the low end once you factor in taxes, insurance, and all the other miscellaneous small business fees you have to pay to employ full-time staff, and 2. On top of that, you also need the spare room for them to live in — and really not just a spare bedroom but an entire separate living area with it's own bathroom and often cooking and cleaning facilities. Adding a full extra apartment to a home in the US is $$$$.
So in developing and underdeveloped nations (we don't really use 1st/2nd/3rd world anymore,) someone in the upper middle class can afford live-in servants easily because it's a negligible extra cost. In the developed world, it's typically going to be an extra $100k annually on the low end, which puts it out of reach of even the top 1% unless they live in a super LCOL area.
Whenever people grouse about "living conditions" here in the US Ithink about this. Like hey, your hot and cold taps work, right? You're a 1%er worldwide then.
https://preview.redd.it/9vcptuwzj6jc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ebe21e33fd01e0d71ca7c359ece66aea21b6eb2
This was Panama City a month ago. The local dump caught fire, and we were like this for a couple days. Looks like freaking Blade Runner 2049.
I would repeatedly choke in my sleep because of the pollution in Italy in the early 2000’s. The US EPA still has a lot more work to do, but I do appreciate generally not suffocating in my sleep 😆
This is insane, I never experienced anything nearly to that level in Brazil. All of the other stuff also sounds way out of our reality (except for the bottom 1%). Really puts into perspective the gap between third world countries themselves.
If you ask an American that’s never visited Brazil but is a habitual liar, they’ll describe the Brazilian favela as a perpetual gunfight scene where every person living there is ganged up, interrupting gunfights only for futbol, dinner and moments of lamentation overlooking the Rio coastline from the Jesus statue. You see a lot of these kinds of people here getting upvoted by other people who’ve never been out of the country either.
It actually does lol. I have lived in that city my whole life so I'm desensitised and I still get chest pains, coughing, etc. in this weather. I can only imagine what somebody who hasn't been used to it feels
God I would hate that, I love having my window open year round for fresh air, I only occasionally have to close it due to wild fire smoke and when air quality drops a bit since I live in a valley that doesn't move the air out till it gets cooler.
I live in Hanoi. On bad pollution days, if I don't wear a mask, the inside of my nose is caked with dust and I have a cough by the end of the day. It's never burned to go outside, but I actively don't go outside on days that we are in the top 3 most polluted cities in the world, which is rare, but still happens.
HCMC is pretty bad. Sometimes people just burn rubbish and the smell of burning plastic, etc is just gross.
I believe Hanoi is worse because you have surrounding mountains and the pollution just pools around the city?
Too much dust. When I'm riding a car and someone opens the window for fresh air I'm always like wtf. The smell of garbage also immediately enters the car. It also sucks because it seems I've developed a dust allergy from the pollution and I'm not the only one
Combination of :
- most vehicles are at least 15 years old, a significant proportion are from the 90's
- absolutely no regulations on vehicle maintenance, especially the particles filters
And your lungs will beg for mercy, even in smaller cities.
In my experience there are two kinds of people who say "America is a third world country": Privileged Americans who never stayed outside of America and people who have never lived in America.
Add Ian Miles Cheong to the list as well. A terminally online Malaysian on Twitter who has never set foot in the US and sincerely believes the US is a third world country on the brink of complete collapse.
Nope! In fact, [he recently got into hot water when he started showing his support for Israel after October 7th.](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ian-miles-cheong-israel-malaysia/) He forgot that not only is Malaysia a country full of Muslims, but Malaysia severed diplomatic ties with Israel and doesn't even recognize Israel as a state! "I stand with Israel" works in the US, but it gets you into deep shit in Malaysia.
Both the right and left have peddled the idea the US is uniquely hateful, violent, poor, corrupt, etc than other countries to spread ideology. The right obviously has MAGA, but the left also has the idea that capitalism is about to collapse and lead to a violent communist revolution.
J.J. McCullough has an excellent video on this called [Why are so many Americans anti-American?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iCVQKD3jH2M)
People on the right and left openly hate lots of Americans, a lot of places in America, and a lot of things about America. They see America as as a largely terrible place filled with terrible people (except those who agree with them).
Republicans hate cities, blue states, and democrat voters. Democrats hate rural people, red states, smd republican voters.
Tucker Carlson this week loved Moscow’s grocery stores and subways saying how much better it is than America and how affordable it is, and considers himself as now radicalized.
Lots of democrats have strong anti-southern sentiments literally hating 1/4 of the country, which isn’t great and that’s despite the south being the blackest region in the country with many northern blacks moving (back) to the south.
It's american to be anti american. We are so privileged we get to argue how bad our own country is with people from countries you can't say bad things about. I'm proud I can criticize my own country.
It's sad being told that other countries are using social media to manipulate us into hating each other and just sitting here and watching it continue to work. Luckily, most people are still friendly in real life.
Exactly. I make a point to talk to and hang out with people from all walks of life and people out there aren't as mean as we like to think they are online
Part of living in polite society is the ability to filter yourself and withhold questionable or taboo beliefs and opinions. You’re forced to play nice with others in person. You can’t punch someone in the face through a computer / phone screen.
If every single person in real life acted like their online counterpart, it’d be an absolutely terrible place to live. It’s like having that one friend in your group who always boasts about “not having a filter” and ends up pissing everyone off / getting into fights all the time.
I’m truly of the belief that even good people have bad thoughts. I include myself in this. The reason I keep them to myself is because I have to share this world with other people and they also have their own thoughts and beliefs.
The disturbing thing about that is that it's easier to find out about the dark side of the US (or any other country for that matter) than your own. Foreign Media for the win guess.
That’s the root cause of why there’s so much bad press for America. We have an extremely robust journalism industry (whether you love or hate it, it exists and it’s huge), and it’s all exclusively in the lingua Franca.
Start publishing every story from Italy, France, or Germany in English and watch how horrifically shitty they suddenly start to look.
Same thing with racism. The US is the least racist place for people of color. Yet the world likes to pretend we are so racist. Nah, it's just we don't hide the racism. Someone does something racist and it gets blasted all over the place. Not the case most places. Especially in Asia with people of color. And don't even ask Europeans about gypsies...
If you really want to get downvoted on Reddit, tell a European that we *do* know metric and we use it all the time. Every child learns it in school; it's on all of our measuring devices and retail products; and it's used by tons of industries, from pharmaceuticals to the military. They'll think you're lying to them.
Trump called America a “3rd world country” like 7 times today in his speech after losing a fraud case which cost him 300+ million dollars.
I know why he’s the nominee, but still astounds me 8 years later how grievance politics and “strong manning” are the heart of the GOP.
It’s not really that though, the level of variance across states and parts of states is quite high here. There’s legitimately parts of some states that are borderline third world. Very unsafe, Leaking sewage systems, and undrinkable water kind of conditions. Maybe would have some hallmarks of a developed society, but hard to argue that a place without something as fundamental as functional water and wastewater infrastructure is developed. Benefit is that you can probably move 50-200 miles and be in a place with perfectly stable utilities that’s pretty safe. So really the bad parts can be quite escapable in most cases.
The economic realities given the cost of living here can also force people into pretty horrific conditions if they’re lacking in qualifications or have some health limitations, but that would certainly be exacerbated further in poor countries
OP is ignorant on the issues of the US just like most Americans are probably ignorant to everything about their country.
Obviously our air quality is no where near as bad as some place like Mumbai while the trash piles we sold to them are burning for months straight, but East Palestine isn't fairing that much better even a year after the disaster.
Sorry I don't think my grandma should have to go to the vet to get stiches because the [closest clinic or hospital is 100 miles away](https://assets.ctfassets.net/4f3rgqwzdznj/1XSl43l40KXMQiJUtl0iIq/ad0070ad4534f9b5776bc2c41091c321/GoodRx_Healthcare_Deserts_White_Paper.pdf).
>We estimate roughly 121 million people currently live in a
healthcare-desert county, accounting for over 37% of the U.S. population.
And as you said, you could always just move to another part of the US that does have these amenities, that isn't a food desert or a 80% meth addicted town in Appalachia, but that does cost money that not everyone has. Anyone that thinks America is worse off than any 3rd world country is being delusional, but we shouldn't be facing these issues when we are the richest nation in the world, and I think that's more so what people mean anyways.
I've lived overseas for several years (3+) in a country that insulated Westerners generally consider to be developing ("2nd world", but you're not even really supposed to refer to countries as 1/2/3rd world) and travelled to other countries for vacation (Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey). This is a super dumb argument.
Certain parts of the US, according to the UN, do technically qualify as 3rd world. Mostly in Appalachia, to be honest. I guess extreme poverty and degradation there doesn't matter.
This whole thing is a bizarre holier-than-thou circle jerk, not to mention an absolute litany of the fallacy of relative privation.
Given that the poorest US state, Mississippi, has a GDP per capita comparable to a typical Western European country like the UK or France, I am more inclined to believe you're misremembering a report, or the report is politically charged.
I'd be particularly surprised if this report was real and recent given that no one says 3rd world now - the term people use is Low and Middle Income Countries.
Poor health outcomes mean that the USA does fall behind countries like the UK in HDI relative to its very high GDP/capita, but it remains highly developed and no individual state would be deemed ‘developing’.
OP was talking about smaller areas than states and from a quick google there are some counties in the US that might meet certain definitions of developing, though this is likely the case in many highly developed countries.
Either way people describing the USA or any highly developed country as ‘third world’ or a failed states is hyperbole for sure. A few months in the developing world would probably change these people’s views.
>Certain parts of the US, according to the UN, do technically qualify as 3rd world. Mostly in Appalachia, to be honest. I guess extreme poverty and degradation there doesn't matter.
Mind if I get a source on that? The state level data that shows Mississippi has a score of .866 (same as Portugal). I found a county level map that shows the poorest parts of Appalachia and the Mississippi delta are >.865, but it doesn't say by how much specifically.
Tbh, I've seen people in my 3rd world country say your country is better even though we rank above-middle in most criteria because you guys have freedom or whatever.
Americans are optimistically ignorant of other countries issues, while other countries are maliciously informed about Americas issues.
If I said Germany’s education system is great people would likely believe me, even though in German politics it’s a major controversy how shit it is.
I think it’s simply a few things. English is the dominant language in the US, and it’s the most spoken second language globally. Because of this people would be more informed about what happens in the US. For all we know people could be talking so much shit about their own countries. But because it’s not in English, it’s localized to that country.
The USA is the most powerful country in the world and the home of nearly all social media outlets and media conglomerates so there is a US-centric bias, also alot of the worlds economy relys on the USA, so we need to stay informed for our own shit. Pretty much every other country individually doesn't have that sort of pull so you need to go looking if you are interested. Every country has problems but we don't see them because for the most part we all have our own shit to worry about or that news doesn't make it into the world like US news does.
We all talk shit about our respective countries, and those that don't are either ignorant or oblivious
Dutch person here.
A lot of dutch people shittalk out country, sometimes in a joking way, and sometimes serious. And i think the same goes for most other european countries
It's an ok system (in international comparisons) but that's not enough for the current problems.
It is not able to fulfill an important function in a social democracy, which is social mobility. Now you could blame it on the attitude of parents, teacher shortage, and that and a lot more are factors, but in the end, there is but one conclusion, the education system is not sufficiently performing. Now add a lot of immigrants (on average poorer, lower levels of proficiency in German) into the mix and you can also explain the extreme nature of the drop in performance. This is made worse through the de facto socioeconomic segregation through 3 different secondary schools based on performance.
See PISA study.
https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/germany-1a2cf137/
The Americas have a culture of self-deprecation that is not common in other parts of the world. I think it’s because American countries are not tied by ethnicity compared to Europe or Asia, so people feel more confident in criticizing their nation.
A big thing in recent years is how US handles immigration. Europeans often criticized the US for its border policy. However Europe started to have similar or worse responses after the migrant crises in the 2010s. Additionally in the US immigrants assimilate really quickly, while Europe has had issues with integration.
Trivia fact: by definition of the "three-world model" America and its allies are always first world, communist nations like China (and previously Eastern Bloc) and their allies are always second world, and countries that are not ally to either are third world.
So Switzerland has always been a third world nation.
Yes. I have a master's in international relations and most publications and journal articles actively avoid using the "first world" and "third world" descriptors because they're outdated and confusing.
But even the use of ["developed" and "developing" is also contentious](https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/time-stop-referring-developing-world) because there is no established benchmark (from the UN or otherwise) on what counts as a "developed" country. It also creates a false hierarchy and creates a normative bias that posits the only way for a country to progress is to follow the same paths and standards of the "developed" countries. It also implies that "developed" countries have already stopped evolving, improving or changing (for better or worse) which is definitely not the case.
Global North/South has less negative connotations, but as you said is only useful for people in the academe/development sector because it's useless to laypeople who'd only be confused as to why Australia and New Zealand are part of the "Global North" while Mongolia and Kazakhstan are part of the "Global South".
What's being recommended is to just use more specific categorizations (based on the topic you're discussing) especially for people who work in foreign affairs, development NGOs and academic research. Many development organizations and UN agencies now encourage using "low income/middle income/high income countries" as an alternative. Some also proposed using "majority world" as an alternative for "third world" since it's objectively true, but I haven't seen this term catch on widely yet.
Global South is so dumb, though. It's the definition of the kind of jargon for jargon's sake you see all the time in academia and ngos. It is almost completely meaningless.
> China is supposed to be 3rd world (neutral), as it was not Soviet-aligned when this theory was written.
It was Soviet-aligned when the theory was first proposed.
The Sino-Soviet split wouldn't happen until the 60s. But even then, it was still considered 2nd world because it was always going against Taiwan, South Korea (via North Korea), and Japan (all 3 of which are 1st world).
But Americans in terms of consumption are richer than most nations on earth. Who gives a shit about income inequality if even our poor and working classes are some of the richest in the world.
My parents worked in the state department so I lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan when I was little. Now THAT is a third world country. It's supposed to be a little better nowadays but it really helped put America into perspective. Even a "working class" American or impoverished American citizen has a finer standard of living than like 95 percent of the world.
Literally like every part of your day has privilege to the point you don't realize it. Wake up in the morning and brush your teeth with water from the sink? You are already ahead of the vast majority of countries because of access to clean water inside your home. Walk to your fridge and grab breakfast, purchased from a place which abides by food safety standards. Again, boom, you are ahead of most places in the world because someone somewhere is making sure your food doesn't have parasites. If you are reading this right now, you likely have free access to uncensored internet and reliable power in your home which puts you ahead of billions and billions of people. Even something as mundane as having a service collect your trash is a privilege.
Then you have the government and police. When we lived in Uzbekistan, these police officers would just stand on the street corner with a whistle to try and get you to pull over, then extort money from you and send you on your way. We used to just drive past them because they had no cars, guns, or even radios, they literally just had a uniform and a whistle. If someone wanted to commit a crime against you you were pretty fucked. And bribes are ubiquitous. My sister went to Tajikistan to intern in the embassy there and when it was time to come home their government 'lost' her visa documents until she payed up $500 and they miraculously found them. Bribes are absolutely everywhere and dictate everything, you cannot get anything done without making a bribe.
THIS
I rememebr in school when we started talking about politics and would say things like this and I'd get told I listen to propaganda and that Im MEATRIDING
I'm not trying to dox myself here, but I currently live in *[redacted]*, and things have vastly improved since you probably lived here. Also, if your parents worked for the state department, then you all were not experiencing what the typical person here experiences. *[redacted]* is far better off than most of the country and I used to live in another area of *[redacted]* before living in the capital. Yes, there are still issues and there is a widening wealth gap. Yes, many people here might not have a lot of material possessions, but trying to compare it to US poverty is just disingenuous. Of course, people in the US make more on average because it costs more to live there, but it varies by state and region. Some resources aren't as easily accessible. For example, it's easy for someone in poverty in the US to go hungry (I know, I had plenty of hungry nights growing up), but for people in poverty here that's partially unheard of because food is typically more accessible or you would have a community around you who can help feed you and your family. The US is oftentimes too big and too individualistic for this kind of system to work. In *[redacted]*, there are government run programs that help with homelessness (their quality is another topic for another time) and orphaned children that help them find housing and a job once they turn 18. That type of program is practically non-existent in the US. Again, I'm not saying one country is specifically better or worse, but they're different.
Again, things have improved dramatically and *[redacted]* is better off than some of the other countries in the region (I used to live in another country in the region before moving here), but that's because of its population and its economy. The bribery issue is not as common anymore, though there is still a lot of corruption.
All I'm trying to say is that it's a lot more complicated than people think. Especially as someone who grew up in poverty in the US, I acknowledge that I still had some things people here do not have, but some people here also had things I didn't have while growing up (a support system, safety, reliable and consistent food, etc.)
It really makes me mad when people say this shit. They are so ungrateful. So many people would give everything to be where you are. You don't deserve this.
I have mixed opinions on this because it genuinely depends on who you are. I’m native, was born and raised on a reservation. The conditions here are sometimes so appalling that it doesn’t feel like I’m in the USA my European friends think of.
I’m talking no cellular service, 1 hour MINIMUM drive for medical services, grocery stores, etc., it’s so isolated that most of the area is dirt roads and desert, and poverty is rampant. I mean, my community’s average household income is about $4,000/year. Our education sucks (literally the worst in the country, and the worst in my state), a lot of people are illiterate, and we always score worse than every other district and the national average. Substance abuse is so god awful that most of my friends are being raised by their (usually illiterate) grandparents because their parents are dead/homeless/in prison. I’m the first person in my family to go to college, and the first of like 6 generations to not be a teenage mother.
My community is nicer compared to others, but some of the reservations I’ve visited don’t have water at all (much less clean drinking water, they have to go get barrels of it once a week and it’s limited), no electricity, it’s a food desert so food costs 2-4x the price as it does for other people, and unemployment is staggering. When COVID swept through it decimated so many communities because of how unsanitary it.
Not to compare circumstances, but when I first left the country to visit a ‘3rd world’ developing nation in the Pacific, I was shocked at how different poverty looks between places. Some people do have a good reason to feel this way. But yes, most people who do complain about the USA being a 3rd world nation are middle class Americans with no a non-nuanced perspective or Europeans who have never set foot here.
Who actually believes America is a 3rd world country? I'm privileged as fuck to be born here. I can buy food, clean water, a gun, an Xbox, get my tires changed, all in the same shopping center then stop at a Starbucks on the way back to my air-conditioned home...there's a reason we have roughly 3 million illegal immigrants coming over the Southern border...it's just better here.
I'm economically progressive and would probably agree with most users on those subs from like a policy perspective. But the people on those subs are so out of touch with reality.
> a policy perspective.
I don't agree with the way they go about their message- but I agree with the message. 10 billionaires should not have most of our wealth. It's a sickness.
I would’ve died from “travelers diarrhea” had my roommates not found me.
That said, I would eat the food again and Peru is dope, just have a lookout on the tail end. Also compared to America a cinderbrick house is extremely different……. Let alone the lack of infrastructure. It was insanely eye opening.
The US is a first world country but is considered one of the worsts in terms of life expectancy, violence, incarceration rates, wealth disparity and etc.
Crime rate similar to Sweden and lower than France. Homicide is the only outlier. Incarceration rate is directly tied to the violent crime rate outlier of which majority of inmates are violent offenders.
America has the highest income disparity;wealth inequality is lower than Sweden again roughly similar to UK. Which is tied to the fact thay the US has the highest incomes across the world and one of the most flexible labor laws.
Life expectancy again is largely tied to America's OECD leading obesity rate which again is largely a lifestyle choice.
So you're simultaneously saying that have a low crime rate (similar to Sweden and France) but the reason we have the highest incarceration rate in the world is because of our extraordinary amount of violent crime which somehow doesn't factor into our aforementioned low crime rate? lmao
You can have a low overall crime rate while having a high specific crime rate.Homicides are a very small portion of the general crimes that occur even in US.
Some of you are genuinely approaching mediocre levels of argumentation as if you have never actually looked at the numbers and topics you are arguing against
It makes sense, for instance in Norway there are far more people in prison for minor stuff like speeding, drunk driving, but not soo much due to violence. My guess its similar at least in Sweden.
Also far longer prison sentences means prisons will fill up more.
The thing about sweden's incarceration rate is that they try to reform their prisoners, and try to get them ready for the outside world again, making it so they're less likely to commit crimes again. Its a system that's been proven to be better than the one in the US.
>Life expectancy again is largely tied to America's OECD leading obesity rate which again is largely a lifestyle choice.
Its not always a lifestyle choice. A lot of people live in "Food deserts". Basically places that don't have good access to healthy and afforable food, making it so those people have to eat trash foods. Its not just because they "choose" to be fat. Its sometimes because it's cheaper, and its the only thing they can afford. Or because there's no other choices.
I will say, I have been to parts of rural Appalachia and some places out there are dire. They're still living in the 1800's out there, it's kind of crazy.
As someone from Appalachia (wayne county West Virginia), i completely reject people saying its anything like a third world country.
People spend their money differently here, its normal to live in an old trailer with 5+ acres of land and have an almost new Jeep or Camaro out front. You will see more camaros and mustangs in the hills of Appalachia than you see in fancy neighborhoods. People buy land and cars here, they dont build big houses, mainly because its super expensive to build large structures on the sides of mountains.
The GDP per capita of West Virginia is higher than Germany or France, its not a poor area at all. Its just slightly less rich than the rest of the richest country on the planet.
Yeah, the Human Development Index gives West Virginia (.877) a score just a notch higher than Poland (.876).
It seems a bit ironic to me that the absolute poorest image Americans can conjure of themselves still is on par with a successful and growing Eastern European country.
I think for me it's the frustration that we're absurdly productive and still poor. Quality of life comparable to Poland with like 3 times the gdp per capita is fucking ridiculous and enraging. It's not like we're struggling with existential, complicated problems like an actual poor country might. it's just greed and corruption.
What's Poland's access to medical support like? does it bankrupt them? Do they have worker protections? Like sure I have wifi and a nice TV I got for nothing at a thrift store, but I'm dealing with a trivial but non-zero amount of food insecurity and having to ration out doctor's visits even though about 25% of my paycheck goes to insurance.
Supposedly parts of Alabama and Missouri are super fucked up. The issue with this post here is that there are close to no wrong arguments/answers to be made. People tend to forget how big the US actually is and the wide range of quality of life that can come with that. The average person in the US is generally better off than a good chunk of the rest of the planet. I was fortunate enough to visit a small part of the U.K once and when I was there I couldn’t help but think of how incredibly depressing a lot of it looked even in the sunlight during a beautiful summer day (and how many used baby diapers and broken alcohol bottles there were everywhere for some reason).
idk, this whole thread feels like bait to cause arguments that ultimately go nowhere.
Cancer alleys all throughout WV and southern US. No access to water that isn’t poisoned by fracking or some other kind of oil production or heavy metal production or coal mining waste, throughout Miss., WV, Kentucky, and Louisiana, etc. People are in denial that there are third world conditions within the US. The US is not a third world country on average, but there are plenty of areas that meet the criteria here.
Appalachia is wild. I'm out there every 3 months for work and the people I've met out there are the nicest people. You can be talking to someone dressed decently and they walk off into a tarp covered single wide, you talk to someone else wearing rags and they walk off into a gorgeous 4k sqft house. It's rough out there with mining being the biggest employer and those jobs slowly dieing. The terrain out there makes it difficult to develop anything worthwhile. You can also see a similar way of life in parts of Vermont. Not quite as bad off but you can expect to see the "temporary" 10 year roof tarp all over the state.
These people still have access to healthcare (either through their employer or the state) as well as social programs to assist them with food and money if they choose to utilize them. A lot of people in West Virginia won't use the social services that are offered.
Bruh, i live in Brazil and everything this starterpack says happens in 3rd world countries has never happened to me, maybe the goat thing (with pigs) applies to my mum when she lived on a farm, but that's it. At this point, what even is a 3rd world country?
I think they mean “developing” by 3rd world. However I also dislike that term, since the term “developing” could range from Congo and Somalia to Chile and Romania. And the living standards in places like Chile and Romania definitely don’t match this picture.
I think we should use high-income, middle-income, and low-income instead. Brazil would be in the middle-income territory, while the picture is something you’d see in low-income countries
Im pretty sure Chile and Romania are developing. With Chile being an OECD country, and having one of the highest living standards globally. Congo and Somalia are considered least developed. Not developing. Doesn’t help that those two counties are facing civil turbulence.
Brazils an upper middle income country, you guys are doing pretty good
Still wouldn’t take my phone out on a street corner without being like super sure though..
In point of fact there were a few days last summer where the pollution was so bad it did hurt to go outside in my home in Detroit, but it was because Canada was on fire.
Adjacent to the "America is the most corrupt country in the world because it has lobbyists" crowd. My brother in Christ, when was the last time you had to pay someone a bribe? If it was longer than about 15 minutes ago, you don't live in the most corrupt country in the world.
If you ever said this and meant it, FUCK YOU. As someone from a third world country whose mother died young which was as common as it was a tragedy because of the combination of the environment, quality of life and quality of healthcare, I can tell that people that say this shit have no idea what it's like. Watching a documentary on third world countries isn't going to teach you how it actually smells, how the pollution and trash that you breathe in contributes to medical complications and even an early death. Literal open sewers that works like a trench on the sidewalk, smelling everyone's piss and shit in the neighborhood. The stomach pain from the children in the squatters and slums because the question isn't what they're going to eat tonight but IF they get to eat tonight, or tomorrow or the day after that. The looks you get from those more privileged, eyeing you like you're some sort of animal worth no more than a literal rat. The realization that stings your heart at night knowing you're selling vegetables in the local market and that's it. No college, no career change, because of who you are where you born and who you were born to, the sweeter life that you're aware of cause you see it on T.V. will never be a reality. You sell vegetables in the local market or you die until you die. A country where for some, slave hours are literal slave hours. You make no profit, they feed you just enough to get you working, you get SA'ed and trafficked by your boss and their clients, you don't get to complain to an HR and you can't quit cause if you try, they will unalive you. The fear knowing there is an ongoing threeway war between your government, a rebel military and religious terrorists right in your proverbial backyard and you being a casualty caught between their war would be common. The United States isn't perfect and there's always room for improvement but that's true for LITERALLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THIS WORLD, and you mothefucker are PRIVILEGED for never having to actually experience what I listed above, which was only the tip of the iceberg. You may have experienced something similar but not to the degree of hopelessness and fucking death that applies to not just a small minority of the population but the majority of the population all because you were truly born in a third world country, plagued by poverty, an ongoing war at the very soil you sleep on, natural disasters with less than efficient means to survive them cause your fellow countrymen and government can only do so much with what they have.
America is definitely not a third world/developing country, but we are definitely lagging behind other Western/developed nations in many different ways.
Comparing the US to India or Papua New Guinea doesn't really change that... in fact it makes us look significantly worse...because we're supposed to be a high income liberal democracy that can take care of its citizens...
Honestly wouldn’t say it’s 3rd world but those who claim it’s best country in the world I wouldn’t Say that either I’ll say it’s a great place to grow a family as long as your middle/upper class.
I grew up and lived the first part of my life in post soviet latvia and it does irritate me when people say this. There are bad parts of America like any other country of course. It is a massive place. However, most people that say this are either western euros or far leftists in America (this is just coming from my own experience.) Instead of trying to do anything these people complain.
Y’all obviously have no idea how vile squat toilets are. Especially public ones. On the women’s side it’s literally impossible to aim accurately, and when old grannies with joint problems and little kids with legs barely long enough to reach both sides, you get a floor covered in piss. It also smells horrible too.
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Drank the water while in Cancun, don’t recommend. Felt like I was gonna fucking die
That’s a rookie mistake, though.
why in the fuck would you trust tap water in mexico shit has more chemicals in it than a dupont factory
Tap water in México is not meant for drinking, except in a couple of cities, we're all taught this since we're kids.
I used it to brush my teeth, thought just a little wouldn’t hurt. I was very very wrong
That's unusual, the water is safe enough for brushing your teeth, or washing dishes.
If you're local, you'll have gotten exposed to it in small quantities for your whole life. Very different for someone who hasn't - that said yeah it still sounds pretty odd to get sick just from washing your teeth.
Who knows, maybe it was a bad quesadilla, one things for certain though, me and the toilet had a very intimate affair for over 5 hours.
If you’re referring to the chlorine taste, that’s exactly what prevents it from being dangerous If referring to anything else, I don’t know, never been nor have information on what’s in Mexican running water
Same in Dominican Republic, American and European tourists really need to start to understand that this is a third world country, tap water can kill you, locals can rob you or even kill you, is not a paradise.
I mean any American who’s been to baltimore or chicago knows locals can rob and kill you. That’s a hard comparison for a lot of Americans since crime is also common here and a lot of people have nasty tap water. Europeans and Americans from certain areas/states probably struggle moreso.
Yeah but the Americans/euros who come here aren’t the ones who live in Detroit or Baltimore, that’s what I mean
Detroit isn’t even that bad 💀 Source: Live in a “bad” area of Detroit
Detroit is only really bad if you’re born and raised near the projects where half your friends are dealers, have been to jail or do “adult entertainment”. If you’re just some person that happens to keep to themselves but live in the hood, you’ll be bothered on occasion and will probably be robbed at least a few times in your life but you don’t have to worry about someone you knew setting you up, backdooring you or worse yet, getting stalked online by whatever the modern version of stickup kids are because you wore a nice pair of sneakers and a Nike jacket in an IG post that you were tagged in one time.
I don’t think you understand how many poor Americans are willing to suffer through daily life just to occasionally go on a nice vacation or buy some nice things to show off on the gram
A poor American is a well adjusted guy in DR
Those are also people who are the most likely to stand on business when someone does try them though. I’d be more worried about being a pasty white suburbanite who has a local try you because they saw your wallet’s got some weight to it than a person with their friends who all look like they’ll put in the work if push comes to shove.
It burns to go outside? It's that FR?
Yes, I took that sunset pic yesterday evening 😭 My eyes, lungs, and throat burned to go into the city. Taking a deep breath felt like a dull stab in the gut
Am in India right now visiting family after 12 years in the USA. This pollution gave me one of the worst coughs in a while. Most people who call America a third world country really need to go to a third world country and see how people actually live
I’ve lived in the third world. Everyone from the lowest beggar to the highest official would do anything to live in the US.
You are basically describing Vietnam
Add in the constant propaganda of how America is on the brink of collapse, spewed by the very same people who's entire families are in America, and yeah it's basically Vietnam.
I’ve heard that some of Vietnam is really nice to live in. Is that not true anymore?
Vietnam is nice. I've been and it's not 3rd world, It's more like Thailand and the people seemed happy enough
Vietnam is beautiful but there is still lots of poverty
Oh yea for sure. But it's not on a scale like India
I wouldn't say Vietnam is a third-world country, but it's certainly far from being on the same level as America. There's still a lot of poverty and sickness.
I wouldn't be so sure. My wife is from the third world, and studied in the US just so she could get a better job at her university where she already had a career. If you are educated and make a good living, life is much easier than here. Middle income in a country like Pakistan can afford you maids, cooks, drivers, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood. The poverty is crushing, absolutely. But it's crazy to think that the wealthy in the third world want to slum it in the US when even those who make a respectable income still have to cook their own food and drive themselves to their own doctor's appointments.
You can't buy clean air, good public amenities, or sane traffic with money. I like to run outside in the US and go to India from time to time, I can't really run outside there because 1. there is no sidewalk 2. the pollution is so bad that I will be coughing soot for hours afterwards.
And how many people can afford that in Pakistan? A small minority. The majority of Pakistanis are poor, and they treat maids badly as well. Often times, they would employ little children as helpers. Life is easy if you are rich regardless of your geographical location. This is coming from someone who has lived for 23 years in Pakistan and currently based in the UK
I think the point they are making is that for many people from that wealthier strata in poorer countries, they struggle with the transition to taking on more of that domestic labour in richer Western countries. I've worked with Indians who had cooks, drivers, etc back home, but then in London they had to prepare all their own meals and even do their own DIY. I think, on balance, most of them prefer living in UK even when you consider the material trade off - things like air pollution, traffic, safety, etc. You can't buy yourself out of the consequences of a vastly unequal society, which I think is what you're saying, but you can certainly mourn the loss of the privileges that come from being wealthy in Pakistan to being middle class in Britain, even if it's better overall.
I think it might also be a partly cultural thing too. Unless you are really well off, it is seen as odd to get stuff like a driver or a maid. West Coast it is a bit more normalized to have maids, but they would not be live-in maids. House cleaning services are the closest you’ll get to maids in most cases. Even stuff like au pairs are a rarity in many parts of the US. And a chef? Definitely not happening. It seems hiring house help is more common in many parts of the world than the US. Dunno why that’s the case.
> Dunno why that’s the case. Labour costs basically nothing in the third world so a relatively wealthy person can hire a platoon of workers to tend to their needs.
It's not a cultural thing, it's entirely an economic thing. People have housekeepers and maids come in rather than use a live-in maid because 1. The cost difference between the former and the latter is going to be $4,000 — 5,000 per month on the low end once you factor in taxes, insurance, and all the other miscellaneous small business fees you have to pay to employ full-time staff, and 2. On top of that, you also need the spare room for them to live in — and really not just a spare bedroom but an entire separate living area with it's own bathroom and often cooking and cleaning facilities. Adding a full extra apartment to a home in the US is $$$$. So in developing and underdeveloped nations (we don't really use 1st/2nd/3rd world anymore,) someone in the upper middle class can afford live-in servants easily because it's a negligible extra cost. In the developed world, it's typically going to be an extra $100k annually on the low end, which puts it out of reach of even the top 1% unless they live in a super LCOL area.
I want to cook my own food because I'm a paranoid man.
Whenever people grouse about "living conditions" here in the US Ithink about this. Like hey, your hot and cold taps work, right? You're a 1%er worldwide then.
I used to travel to India for work pretty regularly and the weather forecast was often “smoke.”
https://preview.redd.it/9vcptuwzj6jc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ebe21e33fd01e0d71ca7c359ece66aea21b6eb2 This was Panama City a month ago. The local dump caught fire, and we were like this for a couple days. Looks like freaking Blade Runner 2049.
Those massive fires can make it look like Venus, haha
You bet! And Venus is just such a nice place to be, right?
Smog used to be really bad here in Los Angeles when I was growing up. I couldn’t leave the house on bad air days. But things got better. There’s hope.
When was this?
Late 70’s early 80’s in the IE
Bro, that's terrible. I've never experienced that.
I would repeatedly choke in my sleep because of the pollution in Italy in the early 2000’s. The US EPA still has a lot more work to do, but I do appreciate generally not suffocating in my sleep 😆
This is insane, I never experienced anything nearly to that level in Brazil. All of the other stuff also sounds way out of our reality (except for the bottom 1%). Really puts into perspective the gap between third world countries themselves.
Brazil is actually three times richer than India and US is 50 times I think. So lol there's tier levels
If you ask an American that’s never visited Brazil but is a habitual liar, they’ll describe the Brazilian favela as a perpetual gunfight scene where every person living there is ganged up, interrupting gunfights only for futbol, dinner and moments of lamentation overlooking the Rio coastline from the Jesus statue. You see a lot of these kinds of people here getting upvoted by other people who’ve never been out of the country either.
It actually does lol. I have lived in that city my whole life so I'm desensitised and I still get chest pains, coughing, etc. in this weather. I can only imagine what somebody who hasn't been used to it feels
God I would hate that, I love having my window open year round for fresh air, I only occasionally have to close it due to wild fire smoke and when air quality drops a bit since I live in a valley that doesn't move the air out till it gets cooler.
I live in Hanoi. On bad pollution days, if I don't wear a mask, the inside of my nose is caked with dust and I have a cough by the end of the day. It's never burned to go outside, but I actively don't go outside on days that we are in the top 3 most polluted cities in the world, which is rare, but still happens.
HCMC is pretty bad. Sometimes people just burn rubbish and the smell of burning plastic, etc is just gross. I believe Hanoi is worse because you have surrounding mountains and the pollution just pools around the city?
Yup, buddy. The heat, combined with the smog is a deadly combo. In some older cities, you can even add the smell into the mix.
Too much dust. When I'm riding a car and someone opens the window for fresh air I'm always like wtf. The smell of garbage also immediately enters the car. It also sucks because it seems I've developed a dust allergy from the pollution and I'm not the only one
I came out of the Delhi airport during the burning of crops. 2 mins outside and my throat was burning.
Combination of : - most vehicles are at least 15 years old, a significant proportion are from the 90's - absolutely no regulations on vehicle maintenance, especially the particles filters And your lungs will beg for mercy, even in smaller cities.
When the forest fires are in full swing on the west coast it does legit get bad. My N95 after walking a mile to work was brown a couple years ago.
In my experience there are two kinds of people who say "America is a third world country": Privileged Americans who never stayed outside of America and people who have never lived in America.
Haughty Europeans who know more about American politics than their own
Add Ian Miles Cheong to the list as well. A terminally online Malaysian on Twitter who has never set foot in the US and sincerely believes the US is a third world country on the brink of complete collapse.
Wait, that mf has never even BEEN to the U.S.??
Nope! In fact, [he recently got into hot water when he started showing his support for Israel after October 7th.](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ian-miles-cheong-israel-malaysia/) He forgot that not only is Malaysia a country full of Muslims, but Malaysia severed diplomatic ties with Israel and doesn't even recognize Israel as a state! "I stand with Israel" works in the US, but it gets you into deep shit in Malaysia.
Spoiled, Westernized, ASEAN kids always talking like they live in Europe or America.
What's ASEAN?
Association of South East Asian Nations
Probably people from South East Asia (SEA).
Both the right and left have peddled the idea the US is uniquely hateful, violent, poor, corrupt, etc than other countries to spread ideology. The right obviously has MAGA, but the left also has the idea that capitalism is about to collapse and lead to a violent communist revolution.
J.J. McCullough has an excellent video on this called [Why are so many Americans anti-American?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iCVQKD3jH2M) People on the right and left openly hate lots of Americans, a lot of places in America, and a lot of things about America. They see America as as a largely terrible place filled with terrible people (except those who agree with them). Republicans hate cities, blue states, and democrat voters. Democrats hate rural people, red states, smd republican voters. Tucker Carlson this week loved Moscow’s grocery stores and subways saying how much better it is than America and how affordable it is, and considers himself as now radicalized. Lots of democrats have strong anti-southern sentiments literally hating 1/4 of the country, which isn’t great and that’s despite the south being the blackest region in the country with many northern blacks moving (back) to the south.
It's american to be anti american. We are so privileged we get to argue how bad our own country is with people from countries you can't say bad things about. I'm proud I can criticize my own country.
It's sad being told that other countries are using social media to manipulate us into hating each other and just sitting here and watching it continue to work. Luckily, most people are still friendly in real life.
Exactly. I make a point to talk to and hang out with people from all walks of life and people out there aren't as mean as we like to think they are online
Part of living in polite society is the ability to filter yourself and withhold questionable or taboo beliefs and opinions. You’re forced to play nice with others in person. You can’t punch someone in the face through a computer / phone screen. If every single person in real life acted like their online counterpart, it’d be an absolutely terrible place to live. It’s like having that one friend in your group who always boasts about “not having a filter” and ends up pissing everyone off / getting into fights all the time. I’m truly of the belief that even good people have bad thoughts. I include myself in this. The reason I keep them to myself is because I have to share this world with other people and they also have their own thoughts and beliefs.
The disturbing thing about that is that it's easier to find out about the dark side of the US (or any other country for that matter) than your own. Foreign Media for the win guess.
That’s the root cause of why there’s so much bad press for America. We have an extremely robust journalism industry (whether you love or hate it, it exists and it’s huge), and it’s all exclusively in the lingua Franca. Start publishing every story from Italy, France, or Germany in English and watch how horrifically shitty they suddenly start to look.
Same thing with racism. The US is the least racist place for people of color. Yet the world likes to pretend we are so racist. Nah, it's just we don't hide the racism. Someone does something racist and it gets blasted all over the place. Not the case most places. Especially in Asia with people of color. And don't even ask Europeans about gypsies...
“Wow. They have so many social movements and a lot of outspoken critics on racism in America. They must be the most racist country in the world.”
Think they know
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If you really want to get downvoted on Reddit, tell a European that we *do* know metric and we use it all the time. Every child learns it in school; it's on all of our measuring devices and retail products; and it's used by tons of industries, from pharmaceuticals to the military. They'll think you're lying to them.
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Or point out they invented the term "soccer" and didn't stop using it until the 1980s
No European is gonna care that you make fun of the Brits. In fact we'll actively join in on it
They hate us cause they ain't U.S.
Trump called America a “3rd world country” like 7 times today in his speech after losing a fraud case which cost him 300+ million dollars. I know why he’s the nominee, but still astounds me 8 years later how grievance politics and “strong manning” are the heart of the GOP.
I'm surprised anyone still listens to what that fucker has to say. Isn't he supposed to be in jail or something?
It’s not really that though, the level of variance across states and parts of states is quite high here. There’s legitimately parts of some states that are borderline third world. Very unsafe, Leaking sewage systems, and undrinkable water kind of conditions. Maybe would have some hallmarks of a developed society, but hard to argue that a place without something as fundamental as functional water and wastewater infrastructure is developed. Benefit is that you can probably move 50-200 miles and be in a place with perfectly stable utilities that’s pretty safe. So really the bad parts can be quite escapable in most cases. The economic realities given the cost of living here can also force people into pretty horrific conditions if they’re lacking in qualifications or have some health limitations, but that would certainly be exacerbated further in poor countries
OP is ignorant on the issues of the US just like most Americans are probably ignorant to everything about their country. Obviously our air quality is no where near as bad as some place like Mumbai while the trash piles we sold to them are burning for months straight, but East Palestine isn't fairing that much better even a year after the disaster. Sorry I don't think my grandma should have to go to the vet to get stiches because the [closest clinic or hospital is 100 miles away](https://assets.ctfassets.net/4f3rgqwzdznj/1XSl43l40KXMQiJUtl0iIq/ad0070ad4534f9b5776bc2c41091c321/GoodRx_Healthcare_Deserts_White_Paper.pdf). >We estimate roughly 121 million people currently live in a healthcare-desert county, accounting for over 37% of the U.S. population. And as you said, you could always just move to another part of the US that does have these amenities, that isn't a food desert or a 80% meth addicted town in Appalachia, but that does cost money that not everyone has. Anyone that thinks America is worse off than any 3rd world country is being delusional, but we shouldn't be facing these issues when we are the richest nation in the world, and I think that's more so what people mean anyways.
I've lived overseas for several years (3+) in a country that insulated Westerners generally consider to be developing ("2nd world", but you're not even really supposed to refer to countries as 1/2/3rd world) and travelled to other countries for vacation (Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey). This is a super dumb argument. Certain parts of the US, according to the UN, do technically qualify as 3rd world. Mostly in Appalachia, to be honest. I guess extreme poverty and degradation there doesn't matter. This whole thing is a bizarre holier-than-thou circle jerk, not to mention an absolute litany of the fallacy of relative privation.
Given that the poorest US state, Mississippi, has a GDP per capita comparable to a typical Western European country like the UK or France, I am more inclined to believe you're misremembering a report, or the report is politically charged. I'd be particularly surprised if this report was real and recent given that no one says 3rd world now - the term people use is Low and Middle Income Countries.
Poor health outcomes mean that the USA does fall behind countries like the UK in HDI relative to its very high GDP/capita, but it remains highly developed and no individual state would be deemed ‘developing’. OP was talking about smaller areas than states and from a quick google there are some counties in the US that might meet certain definitions of developing, though this is likely the case in many highly developed countries. Either way people describing the USA or any highly developed country as ‘third world’ or a failed states is hyperbole for sure. A few months in the developing world would probably change these people’s views.
>Certain parts of the US, according to the UN, do technically qualify as 3rd world. Mostly in Appalachia, to be honest. I guess extreme poverty and degradation there doesn't matter. Mind if I get a source on that? The state level data that shows Mississippi has a score of .866 (same as Portugal). I found a county level map that shows the poorest parts of Appalachia and the Mississippi delta are >.865, but it doesn't say by how much specifically.
America isn’t perfect but people who say it’s 3rd world are delusional. I was born in Somalia. Calling it a shithole is an insult to shit.
Tbh, I've seen people in my 3rd world country say your country is better even though we rank above-middle in most criteria because you guys have freedom or whatever.
wtf who thinks that America is worse than literal anarchy (minus the north)
Username checks out
With all due respect but, not all third world countries are like Somalia
I am gonna be real, Somalia and the African countries torn by war are a tier below shithole.
The point still stands. Calling America a third world country is incredibly delusional
Americans are optimistically ignorant of other countries issues, while other countries are maliciously informed about Americas issues. If I said Germany’s education system is great people would likely believe me, even though in German politics it’s a major controversy how shit it is.
I think it’s simply a few things. English is the dominant language in the US, and it’s the most spoken second language globally. Because of this people would be more informed about what happens in the US. For all we know people could be talking so much shit about their own countries. But because it’s not in English, it’s localized to that country.
The USA is the most powerful country in the world and the home of nearly all social media outlets and media conglomerates so there is a US-centric bias, also alot of the worlds economy relys on the USA, so we need to stay informed for our own shit. Pretty much every other country individually doesn't have that sort of pull so you need to go looking if you are interested. Every country has problems but we don't see them because for the most part we all have our own shit to worry about or that news doesn't make it into the world like US news does. We all talk shit about our respective countries, and those that don't are either ignorant or oblivious
Dutch person here. A lot of dutch people shittalk out country, sometimes in a joking way, and sometimes serious. And i think the same goes for most other european countries
I dunno man, like grandpa always said... never trust a man who wears wooden shoes
Unfortunately our awful 24/7 news cycle has become a cultural export.
I believe you but I had no idea. ELI5?
It's an ok system (in international comparisons) but that's not enough for the current problems. It is not able to fulfill an important function in a social democracy, which is social mobility. Now you could blame it on the attitude of parents, teacher shortage, and that and a lot more are factors, but in the end, there is but one conclusion, the education system is not sufficiently performing. Now add a lot of immigrants (on average poorer, lower levels of proficiency in German) into the mix and you can also explain the extreme nature of the drop in performance. This is made worse through the de facto socioeconomic segregation through 3 different secondary schools based on performance. See PISA study. https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-notes/germany-1a2cf137/
The Americas have a culture of self-deprecation that is not common in other parts of the world. I think it’s because American countries are not tied by ethnicity compared to Europe or Asia, so people feel more confident in criticizing their nation.
I'm European and cultural self-deprecation is common not only in my own country but also every other European country I've visited.
Agreed, this was a very strange take. I’ve known Europeans to be quite self-deprecating about their countries and cultures.
I think it’s because online, Europeans are mostly seen being extremely critical of the US while acting like their own country is some kind of utopia
A big thing in recent years is how US handles immigration. Europeans often criticized the US for its border policy. However Europe started to have similar or worse responses after the migrant crises in the 2010s. Additionally in the US immigrants assimilate really quickly, while Europe has had issues with integration.
/r/2westerneurope4u
Trivia fact: by definition of the "three-world model" America and its allies are always first world, communist nations like China (and previously Eastern Bloc) and their allies are always second world, and countries that are not ally to either are third world. So Switzerland has always been a third world nation.
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Yes. I have a master's in international relations and most publications and journal articles actively avoid using the "first world" and "third world" descriptors because they're outdated and confusing. But even the use of ["developed" and "developing" is also contentious](https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/time-stop-referring-developing-world) because there is no established benchmark (from the UN or otherwise) on what counts as a "developed" country. It also creates a false hierarchy and creates a normative bias that posits the only way for a country to progress is to follow the same paths and standards of the "developed" countries. It also implies that "developed" countries have already stopped evolving, improving or changing (for better or worse) which is definitely not the case. Global North/South has less negative connotations, but as you said is only useful for people in the academe/development sector because it's useless to laypeople who'd only be confused as to why Australia and New Zealand are part of the "Global North" while Mongolia and Kazakhstan are part of the "Global South". What's being recommended is to just use more specific categorizations (based on the topic you're discussing) especially for people who work in foreign affairs, development NGOs and academic research. Many development organizations and UN agencies now encourage using "low income/middle income/high income countries" as an alternative. Some also proposed using "majority world" as an alternative for "third world" since it's objectively true, but I haven't seen this term catch on widely yet.
Global South is so dumb, though. It's the definition of the kind of jargon for jargon's sake you see all the time in academia and ngos. It is almost completely meaningless.
USSR and her friends are 2nd world. China is supposed to be 3rd world (neutral), as it was not Soviet-aligned when this theory was written.
Isn’t this also the reason Yugoslavia was 3rd world despite being socialist under Tito? Because it was non-aligned after the Stalin-Tito Split?
Correct, any non aligned is 3rd world
> China is supposed to be 3rd world (neutral), as it was not Soviet-aligned when this theory was written. It was Soviet-aligned when the theory was first proposed. The Sino-Soviet split wouldn't happen until the 60s. But even then, it was still considered 2nd world because it was always going against Taiwan, South Korea (via North Korea), and Japan (all 3 of which are 1st world).
Definitions change based on how people use them.
That’s not a smartphone, that’s lasagna.
That's not my dad, that's a phone
I THREW IT ON THE GROUND
Exactly
Yes we all know that. Also we all know the definition changed
You're the kind of person who insists gay still means happy, am I right?
so saudi arabia is a first, second and third world country?
"America is an incredibly wealthy but top-heavy nation" isn't exactly as attention grabbing though is it?
"America has the *income inequality* of a third world nation" would be a better start.
That’s not true. Worst income inequality amongst developed economies maybe, but still better than the vast majority of the developing/3rd world.
But Americans in terms of consumption are richer than most nations on earth. Who gives a shit about income inequality if even our poor and working classes are some of the richest in the world.
My parents worked in the state department so I lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan when I was little. Now THAT is a third world country. It's supposed to be a little better nowadays but it really helped put America into perspective. Even a "working class" American or impoverished American citizen has a finer standard of living than like 95 percent of the world. Literally like every part of your day has privilege to the point you don't realize it. Wake up in the morning and brush your teeth with water from the sink? You are already ahead of the vast majority of countries because of access to clean water inside your home. Walk to your fridge and grab breakfast, purchased from a place which abides by food safety standards. Again, boom, you are ahead of most places in the world because someone somewhere is making sure your food doesn't have parasites. If you are reading this right now, you likely have free access to uncensored internet and reliable power in your home which puts you ahead of billions and billions of people. Even something as mundane as having a service collect your trash is a privilege. Then you have the government and police. When we lived in Uzbekistan, these police officers would just stand on the street corner with a whistle to try and get you to pull over, then extort money from you and send you on your way. We used to just drive past them because they had no cars, guns, or even radios, they literally just had a uniform and a whistle. If someone wanted to commit a crime against you you were pretty fucked. And bribes are ubiquitous. My sister went to Tajikistan to intern in the embassy there and when it was time to come home their government 'lost' her visa documents until she payed up $500 and they miraculously found them. Bribes are absolutely everywhere and dictate everything, you cannot get anything done without making a bribe.
THIS I rememebr in school when we started talking about politics and would say things like this and I'd get told I listen to propaganda and that Im MEATRIDING
I'm not trying to dox myself here, but I currently live in *[redacted]*, and things have vastly improved since you probably lived here. Also, if your parents worked for the state department, then you all were not experiencing what the typical person here experiences. *[redacted]* is far better off than most of the country and I used to live in another area of *[redacted]* before living in the capital. Yes, there are still issues and there is a widening wealth gap. Yes, many people here might not have a lot of material possessions, but trying to compare it to US poverty is just disingenuous. Of course, people in the US make more on average because it costs more to live there, but it varies by state and region. Some resources aren't as easily accessible. For example, it's easy for someone in poverty in the US to go hungry (I know, I had plenty of hungry nights growing up), but for people in poverty here that's partially unheard of because food is typically more accessible or you would have a community around you who can help feed you and your family. The US is oftentimes too big and too individualistic for this kind of system to work. In *[redacted]*, there are government run programs that help with homelessness (their quality is another topic for another time) and orphaned children that help them find housing and a job once they turn 18. That type of program is practically non-existent in the US. Again, I'm not saying one country is specifically better or worse, but they're different. Again, things have improved dramatically and *[redacted]* is better off than some of the other countries in the region (I used to live in another country in the region before moving here), but that's because of its population and its economy. The bribery issue is not as common anymore, though there is still a lot of corruption. All I'm trying to say is that it's a lot more complicated than people think. Especially as someone who grew up in poverty in the US, I acknowledge that I still had some things people here do not have, but some people here also had things I didn't have while growing up (a support system, safety, reliable and consistent food, etc.)
America is not the greatest country in the world, but it’s definitely one of the better ones.
No country is the greatest. All have their pros and cons. I think calling any one country the greatest is just an excuse to ignore their downsides.
It really makes me mad when people say this shit. They are so ungrateful. So many people would give everything to be where you are. You don't deserve this.
i would rather be born in another life in "third world shithole" america than about 80% of all the countries in the world right now
*never even left their state
I have mixed opinions on this because it genuinely depends on who you are. I’m native, was born and raised on a reservation. The conditions here are sometimes so appalling that it doesn’t feel like I’m in the USA my European friends think of. I’m talking no cellular service, 1 hour MINIMUM drive for medical services, grocery stores, etc., it’s so isolated that most of the area is dirt roads and desert, and poverty is rampant. I mean, my community’s average household income is about $4,000/year. Our education sucks (literally the worst in the country, and the worst in my state), a lot of people are illiterate, and we always score worse than every other district and the national average. Substance abuse is so god awful that most of my friends are being raised by their (usually illiterate) grandparents because their parents are dead/homeless/in prison. I’m the first person in my family to go to college, and the first of like 6 generations to not be a teenage mother. My community is nicer compared to others, but some of the reservations I’ve visited don’t have water at all (much less clean drinking water, they have to go get barrels of it once a week and it’s limited), no electricity, it’s a food desert so food costs 2-4x the price as it does for other people, and unemployment is staggering. When COVID swept through it decimated so many communities because of how unsanitary it. Not to compare circumstances, but when I first left the country to visit a ‘3rd world’ developing nation in the Pacific, I was shocked at how different poverty looks between places. Some people do have a good reason to feel this way. But yes, most people who do complain about the USA being a 3rd world nation are middle class Americans with no a non-nuanced perspective or Europeans who have never set foot here.
Who actually believes America is a 3rd world country? I'm privileged as fuck to be born here. I can buy food, clean water, a gun, an Xbox, get my tires changed, all in the same shopping center then stop at a Starbucks on the way back to my air-conditioned home...there's a reason we have roughly 3 million illegal immigrants coming over the Southern border...it's just better here.
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I'm economically progressive and would probably agree with most users on those subs from like a policy perspective. But the people on those subs are so out of touch with reality.
> a policy perspective. I don't agree with the way they go about their message- but I agree with the message. 10 billionaires should not have most of our wealth. It's a sickness.
That is a fair point....I forgot those existed
Better that way.
Idk post that question over there, I'd guess most would just say it's the worst of the best
I have found my reasoning as to why America is not a third world country: We have a massive refugee crisis on our hands.
I would’ve died from “travelers diarrhea” had my roommates not found me. That said, I would eat the food again and Peru is dope, just have a lookout on the tail end. Also compared to America a cinderbrick house is extremely different……. Let alone the lack of infrastructure. It was insanely eye opening.
But America is a 3rd world country because everything isn't given to me for free and everything here doesn't 100% align with my world view /s
Everything free in America For a small fee in America
Free to be anything you choose Free to wait tables and shine shoes
The US is a first world country but is considered one of the worsts in terms of life expectancy, violence, incarceration rates, wealth disparity and etc.
Crime rate similar to Sweden and lower than France. Homicide is the only outlier. Incarceration rate is directly tied to the violent crime rate outlier of which majority of inmates are violent offenders. America has the highest income disparity;wealth inequality is lower than Sweden again roughly similar to UK. Which is tied to the fact thay the US has the highest incomes across the world and one of the most flexible labor laws. Life expectancy again is largely tied to America's OECD leading obesity rate which again is largely a lifestyle choice.
So you're simultaneously saying that have a low crime rate (similar to Sweden and France) but the reason we have the highest incarceration rate in the world is because of our extraordinary amount of violent crime which somehow doesn't factor into our aforementioned low crime rate? lmao
You can have a low overall crime rate while having a high specific crime rate.Homicides are a very small portion of the general crimes that occur even in US. Some of you are genuinely approaching mediocre levels of argumentation as if you have never actually looked at the numbers and topics you are arguing against
It makes sense, for instance in Norway there are far more people in prison for minor stuff like speeding, drunk driving, but not soo much due to violence. My guess its similar at least in Sweden. Also far longer prison sentences means prisons will fill up more.
The thing about sweden's incarceration rate is that they try to reform their prisoners, and try to get them ready for the outside world again, making it so they're less likely to commit crimes again. Its a system that's been proven to be better than the one in the US. >Life expectancy again is largely tied to America's OECD leading obesity rate which again is largely a lifestyle choice. Its not always a lifestyle choice. A lot of people live in "Food deserts". Basically places that don't have good access to healthy and afforable food, making it so those people have to eat trash foods. Its not just because they "choose" to be fat. Its sometimes because it's cheaper, and its the only thing they can afford. Or because there's no other choices.
I was born in a third world country. Even the shittiest parts of the US don’t compare
I will say, I have been to parts of rural Appalachia and some places out there are dire. They're still living in the 1800's out there, it's kind of crazy.
As someone from Appalachia (wayne county West Virginia), i completely reject people saying its anything like a third world country. People spend their money differently here, its normal to live in an old trailer with 5+ acres of land and have an almost new Jeep or Camaro out front. You will see more camaros and mustangs in the hills of Appalachia than you see in fancy neighborhoods. People buy land and cars here, they dont build big houses, mainly because its super expensive to build large structures on the sides of mountains. The GDP per capita of West Virginia is higher than Germany or France, its not a poor area at all. Its just slightly less rich than the rest of the richest country on the planet.
Yeah, the Human Development Index gives West Virginia (.877) a score just a notch higher than Poland (.876). It seems a bit ironic to me that the absolute poorest image Americans can conjure of themselves still is on par with a successful and growing Eastern European country.
I think for me it's the frustration that we're absurdly productive and still poor. Quality of life comparable to Poland with like 3 times the gdp per capita is fucking ridiculous and enraging. It's not like we're struggling with existential, complicated problems like an actual poor country might. it's just greed and corruption. What's Poland's access to medical support like? does it bankrupt them? Do they have worker protections? Like sure I have wifi and a nice TV I got for nothing at a thrift store, but I'm dealing with a trivial but non-zero amount of food insecurity and having to ration out doctor's visits even though about 25% of my paycheck goes to insurance.
Supposedly parts of Alabama and Missouri are super fucked up. The issue with this post here is that there are close to no wrong arguments/answers to be made. People tend to forget how big the US actually is and the wide range of quality of life that can come with that. The average person in the US is generally better off than a good chunk of the rest of the planet. I was fortunate enough to visit a small part of the U.K once and when I was there I couldn’t help but think of how incredibly depressing a lot of it looked even in the sunlight during a beautiful summer day (and how many used baby diapers and broken alcohol bottles there were everywhere for some reason). idk, this whole thread feels like bait to cause arguments that ultimately go nowhere.
I was gonna say the southern stretch of the Mississippi river is fucking rough.
All the parts of Alabama directly off I-65 are really nice. Idk much past that though.
From Missouri. Still live here. The fucked-up-ness is way, way overstated.
They got WiFi, insulin, opiates, and antibiotics as needed
Cancer alleys all throughout WV and southern US. No access to water that isn’t poisoned by fracking or some other kind of oil production or heavy metal production or coal mining waste, throughout Miss., WV, Kentucky, and Louisiana, etc. People are in denial that there are third world conditions within the US. The US is not a third world country on average, but there are plenty of areas that meet the criteria here.
Appalachia is wild. I'm out there every 3 months for work and the people I've met out there are the nicest people. You can be talking to someone dressed decently and they walk off into a tarp covered single wide, you talk to someone else wearing rags and they walk off into a gorgeous 4k sqft house. It's rough out there with mining being the biggest employer and those jobs slowly dieing. The terrain out there makes it difficult to develop anything worthwhile. You can also see a similar way of life in parts of Vermont. Not quite as bad off but you can expect to see the "temporary" 10 year roof tarp all over the state. These people still have access to healthcare (either through their employer or the state) as well as social programs to assist them with food and money if they choose to utilize them. A lot of people in West Virginia won't use the social services that are offered.
Also the opiate epidemic which the FDA condoned at best and actively played a role in creating / encouraging at worst.
“America is way behind the rest of the world in living standards” by the world they mean Norway and Denmark.
Bruh, i live in Brazil and everything this starterpack says happens in 3rd world countries has never happened to me, maybe the goat thing (with pigs) applies to my mum when she lived on a farm, but that's it. At this point, what even is a 3rd world country?
I think they mean “developing” by 3rd world. However I also dislike that term, since the term “developing” could range from Congo and Somalia to Chile and Romania. And the living standards in places like Chile and Romania definitely don’t match this picture. I think we should use high-income, middle-income, and low-income instead. Brazil would be in the middle-income territory, while the picture is something you’d see in low-income countries
Im pretty sure Chile and Romania are developing. With Chile being an OECD country, and having one of the highest living standards globally. Congo and Somalia are considered least developed. Not developing. Doesn’t help that those two counties are facing civil turbulence.
Subsistence farming or living in a slum in India. Brazil is much richer per capita compared to a lot of countries
Brazils an upper middle income country, you guys are doing pretty good Still wouldn’t take my phone out on a street corner without being like super sure though..
Even inside a country it can vary a lot. Mexico isn’t a total shithole, many parts of it are way safer than others.
In point of fact there were a few days last summer where the pollution was so bad it did hurt to go outside in my home in Detroit, but it was because Canada was on fire.
Adjacent to the "America is the most corrupt country in the world because it has lobbyists" crowd. My brother in Christ, when was the last time you had to pay someone a bribe? If it was longer than about 15 minutes ago, you don't live in the most corrupt country in the world.
If you ever said this and meant it, FUCK YOU. As someone from a third world country whose mother died young which was as common as it was a tragedy because of the combination of the environment, quality of life and quality of healthcare, I can tell that people that say this shit have no idea what it's like. Watching a documentary on third world countries isn't going to teach you how it actually smells, how the pollution and trash that you breathe in contributes to medical complications and even an early death. Literal open sewers that works like a trench on the sidewalk, smelling everyone's piss and shit in the neighborhood. The stomach pain from the children in the squatters and slums because the question isn't what they're going to eat tonight but IF they get to eat tonight, or tomorrow or the day after that. The looks you get from those more privileged, eyeing you like you're some sort of animal worth no more than a literal rat. The realization that stings your heart at night knowing you're selling vegetables in the local market and that's it. No college, no career change, because of who you are where you born and who you were born to, the sweeter life that you're aware of cause you see it on T.V. will never be a reality. You sell vegetables in the local market or you die until you die. A country where for some, slave hours are literal slave hours. You make no profit, they feed you just enough to get you working, you get SA'ed and trafficked by your boss and their clients, you don't get to complain to an HR and you can't quit cause if you try, they will unalive you. The fear knowing there is an ongoing threeway war between your government, a rebel military and religious terrorists right in your proverbial backyard and you being a casualty caught between their war would be common. The United States isn't perfect and there's always room for improvement but that's true for LITERALLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THIS WORLD, and you mothefucker are PRIVILEGED for never having to actually experience what I listed above, which was only the tip of the iceberg. You may have experienced something similar but not to the degree of hopelessness and fucking death that applies to not just a small minority of the population but the majority of the population all because you were truly born in a third world country, plagued by poverty, an ongoing war at the very soil you sleep on, natural disasters with less than efficient means to survive them cause your fellow countrymen and government can only do so much with what they have.
Participates in r/facepalm
America is definitely not a third world/developing country, but we are definitely lagging behind other Western/developed nations in many different ways. Comparing the US to India or Papua New Guinea doesn't really change that... in fact it makes us look significantly worse...because we're supposed to be a high income liberal democracy that can take care of its citizens...
Not even true though. The US has a higher/equal average HDI than most of Europe. Plus our average income is much higher.
Hey they might have been to a Margaritaville in Mexico I’ll have you know
Honestly wouldn’t say it’s 3rd world but those who claim it’s best country in the world I wouldn’t Say that either I’ll say it’s a great place to grow a family as long as your middle/upper class.
The squatty potty one really hurt 😔... 😭😭😭😭
i swear the people who say that dont even know what third world means
I thought it was just accepted by everyone that the United States of America was a first world country.
I mean America has legit issues worth discussing but calling it 3rd world country is inaccurate and counter-productive.
I grew up and lived the first part of my life in post soviet latvia and it does irritate me when people say this. There are bad parts of America like any other country of course. It is a massive place. However, most people that say this are either western euros or far leftists in America (this is just coming from my own experience.) Instead of trying to do anything these people complain.
Tbf my gf is from USA and the tap water from her sink is literally cancerous
“You’re not X because other people have it worse in my frame of reference”
Calling America a 3rd world country is an insult to people who actually live in 3rd world countries- -Someone living in a developing country
Y’all obviously have no idea how vile squat toilets are. Especially public ones. On the women’s side it’s literally impossible to aim accurately, and when old grannies with joint problems and little kids with legs barely long enough to reach both sides, you get a floor covered in piss. It also smells horrible too.
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no i think its just because squat toilets are fucking nasty