| HomokHarcos said:
When the developed nations of the world are mentioned, a few always come up. Canada, United States, almost all of Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. However, the US being considered a developed country puzzles me. Looking at the GINI Index, it has massive inequality in terms of wealth. All of the other developed nations are in the green while the United States is red. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality Mississippi is pretty poor, and it's hard to think of it being a rich nation when you are in some of the inner cities or rural areas in the South. Also, the crime rate and violence is much higher than the rest of the developed world. Looking at the intentional homicide rate also brings a similar view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate Detroit can feel like many South American or South African cities when it comes to violence. Nowhere in Canada would a place ever be that dangerous to visit.
Compared that also with no public health care. In many other developed countries you are not treated as something to be exploited for money at the hospital. In the United States it seems that money is the priority in hospitals. Cuba literally has a higher-life expectancy than the United States. Pretty much all of the other developed countries do.
Also the government is much more corrupt than the other developed countries. The USA has become a two-party dominated country with the Democrats and Republicans where donors actually determine the nation's policy. So many times politicians are caught doing crooked things such as Rick Snyder knowing that the Flint water was unsafe yet he continued to let the water be used. He was never punished for it.
The United States notably Is also much more religious than the other developed countries. The government tries to prevent gay marriage and abortions from becoming acceptable. For supposedly being a secular nation the government seems to base a lot of their rulings off of religious views. Then there’s the education system. The US is not very educated compared to many other Western nations. The high prices and prestigious universities certainly are great for the country, but many local schools are so poorly funded that they can’t even provide up-to-date books. This makes the country feel more like China than the Netherlands or Sweden. Of course this also extends to school violence. In no other country in the whole world are mass shootings in the school a problem like they are in the United States. Quite unfathomably, the general public has normalized school shootings to the point when one does happen it gets forgotten about very quickly.
I lived in the United States for four years and love it with a spot in my heart. But all the problems such as poor education, government corruption, violence, income inequality make it just under being a developed nation. It is not comparable to Australia, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan and my current country Canada in terms of living.
|
Just so you know, the rural areas that are "Pretty Poor" have a better standard of living than places like San Francisco that has super rich people.
The wage gap is not something one can really look at when looking at the US as a whole. A person can be renting a closet for 2,000 a month in San Francisco and barely survive even though they may 100k a year. Meanwhile someone making 30k a year in Alabama can have a 3 story house with kids and live comfortably.
