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I know what it means, thanks. I also know that there is abject poverty that we don't know about in American. Still, there's abject poverty here as well.
No one is answering my question though.
If you truly know what it means you would have never posted this thread in the first place. Unless an anomaly event that's statistically very unlikely to occur takes place, there is NO CHANCE of this happening to the USA in the next twenty years. And this is accounting for all aspects of a third world country. Meaning no we won't be considered third world economically, militarily, educationally or in terms of quality of life. Let me give you an example of how it's like in a third world country and you tell me if these conditions are likely for the US in the next 20 years:
But the quality of life in the US is lower than those countries, especially Scandinavia.
That is why I said standard of living is higher in Denmark and Norway. I didn't mention Sweden because young people are emigrating due to housing shortage, low wages and lack of jobs.
But even though Denmark and Norway got higher standard of living does not make US a third world country. US may not be the best country in the world, but it still way better than countries such as Italy and we still call Italy a first world country.
As the distribution of wealth becomes more and more unequal, the global economy will become more and more bifurcated into just two groups, workers and investors. The investors will "own" the workers and be able to manipulate and exploit them to suit their own investment goals, wealth maximization. But there will be no revolution, because the workers will all be indoctrinated to believe that the free market system is best for them.
The best predictor of future wealth is current wealth AND studies show that the more wealth you have at any given time the greater the rate of growth of ones wealth over subsequent years.
I don't dispute any of this, but I think it's an oversimplification. And I don't believe 3rd World countries are quite as easy to do business in as you're making it out to be.
That's fair, there are certainly some that are bound to be a paperwork nightmare.
That said, you can't really take the "Doing Business Index" all that seriously. Cameroon, for instance, is considered 135th out of 189 countries for ease of starting a business. And I'm sure that, if you followed all the regulations to a T, you'd probably find it was THAT hard. But I have a friend who started one there, and all he did was basically pay a guy filing his paperwork just a little extra under the table and voila! he was approved for his license in three days.
There's a reason that some of the richest businessmen in this country are leaving the first world entirely (with the notable exceptions of Singapore, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica) to conduct their business.
And yes, my post was an oversimplification. Explanation of why first world companies have historically stagnated in the last fifty years would probably require treatment in an entire economic treatise, and I tried to explain it in one post. But the basic principles don't change, and the original argument was that it had something to do with first world countries needing to do worse for third world countries to do better, which it doesn't.
As the distribution of wealth becomes more and more unequal, the global economy will become more and more bifurcated into just two groups, workers and investors. The investors will "own" the workers and be able to manipulate and exploit them to suit their own investment goals, wealth maximization. But there will be no revolution, because the workers will all be indoctrinated to believe that the free market system is best for them.
The best predictor of future wealth is current wealth AND studies show that the more wealth you have at any given time the greater the rate of growth of ones wealth over subsequent years.
Good luck.
I hear this all the time. I won't dispute that the gap between the politically-and-central-bank-connected classes around the world, and everyone else, IS growing.
That said, the system of free markets that you're excoriating has allowed more people than ever to relieve themselves of abject poverty.
Africa, however, has gotten MUCH worse since the 1970's. It's no coincidence, though, that the 70's were the precise time that first world governments around the world began HUGE foreign aid programs. Africa is the single largest welfare state experiment the world has ever seen, and it's failing miserably.
It's not about the rich vs. the poor. It's about the politically connected vs. everyone else, and until people start understanding the nature of THAT paradigm, things will continue to get worse.
The population is becoming more 3rd world. Immigrants come more and more from Latin America and Africa. These are where the 3rd world is located. As they come, they bring their culture, habits, and ways of life with them. These are 3rd world ways of life.
Earlier, America could absorb waves of immigrants from different cultures but the cultures of those immigrants were not so different from the prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture. Assimilation was difficult but eventually, it more or less happened.
It is much more difficult to absorb Latin American and African immigrants because their cultures and habits are vastly different from even the current American culture. Look at picture of San Paulo, Guadalajara or Monrovia. These peoples ways of life bear no resemblance whatever to the those of the peoples of Northampton, Galway or Krakow.
We can expect the culture of the future America to be more like that of Honduras and Nigeria and less like that of England, Poland and Ireland. Whatever the amalgamation looks like, it look less like Europe and more like Africa and South America.
As the distribution of wealth becomes more and more unequal, the global economy will become more and more bifurcated into just two groups, workers and investors. The investors will "own" the workers and be able to manipulate and exploit them to suit their own investment goals, wealth maximization. But there will be no revolution, because the workers will all be indoctrinated to believe that the free market system is best for them.
The best predictor of future wealth is current wealth AND studies show that the more wealth you have at any given time the greater the rate of growth of ones wealth over subsequent years.
Good luck.
If that is the case, then countries who don't believe in the free market should be more successful. Some of the countries who don't believe in free markets are Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Japan and Argentina. Countries who believe in free market are Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, China, Canada and the US.
Doesn't seem like countries where no one is indoctrinated is doing much better, they are in fact doing much worse. Doesn't mean inequality needs to be a problem, but you don't need to reject the free market to combat inequality. A much better way is to work with it, provide a safety net to make sure people can get help when they need it, make sure there is enough qualified workers and limit the number of places in universities, so that people won't graduate into unemployment.
However making it extremely difficult to fire workers or force companies to fire the youngest workers will only lead to inefficiencies and more unemployment. If you make it very difficult to earn money from your investments, then the investments go elsewhere, making everyone poorer. And protecting business sectors from innovations does not lead to lower unemployment, it leads to higher prices.
The idea that we must do worse for third world countries to do better is a COMPLETELY flawed economic premise. This has basically been dispatched by every economist of the classical liberal persuasion since Adam Smith.
Im not sure where you studied economics but there is only a finite amount of resources on this planet. Wealth only exists because some hold more of these resources than others, that's the definition of wealth. I.E. in order to share wealth with those who don't have it, those with the wealth by reason have to decrease their wealth. Translation, in order to lift up those without, you must give up some of what you have.
Richer countries also have a larger tax base for the parasitic class (governments and their benefactors, i.e. military contractors, welfare recipients, infrastructure companies, intelligence agencies, etc.) to feed off of, plus they can use their tax revenue to enforce commerce-killing regulations more thoroughly, since they can pay the regulators to be more thorough.
You want to start a business in a third world country and you can generally just bribe some official with a low sum to overlook any mistakes on your paperwork, and then continue about your business with basically no government intrusion.=. You want to open a business here, or in other over-regulated industrialized countries, you better be licensed, numbered, have a lawyer, understand the laws of your particular industry, know who you can and can't hire, be prepared to pay the minimum wage even if that persons MVP is not worth half of it, and have an understanding that a singe misstep could ruin your livelihood.
It's no wonder first world economies are stagnating. That analysis doesn't even touch on the fact that EVERY CENTRAL BANK ON EARTH is printing fiat currency.
It's a simple formulation and has nothing whatsoever to do with immigration at all.
You have to print fiat currency with a population of 7 billion people, there isn't enough gold or silver on the planet to use as a standard for this many people.
There's no cold war anymore, and even if there were I'm sure the US wouldn't be neutral. If you mean economically, I'm that's just as resounding a no. You see, the "Third World" was the "Third World" because it was basically so insignificant it didn't matter. Nothing that's happening here isn't happening in the other First World (aka capitalist) countries. We'll all be insignificant together.
The solution is to learn how to live within your reduced means without being dependent on government handouts which won't be around if things ever get that bad.
Yeah that works well until you can't even afford the bathroom in an apartment. Then what? Are people supposed to start living in shantytowns?
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