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Total GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not.

HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GDP. Brazil's HDI is 0.755, just below Mexico (0.756)[1]. That's good by global standards, but still "poor" by U.S. standards. Its GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, so being kind to Brazil) is $15,615. The U.S.'s is $55,805[2]

[1]: http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

I completely agree with you. HDI is a much better index and measurement. This is actually what we use in social programs here.

The GDP comment I made is that this is not a "poor country", it is instead a country full of wealth inequality and self-perpetuating bad distribution of opportunities where poor people are being kept poor due to having no access to infrastructure and opportunities.

It is a very complex situation and all expressions such as "poor-3rd-world" or "seventh gdp economy" are all reductionist and shallow compared to what is really happening.

I agree with your comment, particularly with the fact that HDI is a good index for monitoring the "richness" of a country.

However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.

>Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal.

GDP per capita is what matters here. And GDP per capita in Brazil is a joke. I think a country full of poor people can be called a poor country.

I think it will be very hard for Brazil and India to shake being labeled as third world countries, with the amount of citizens below the poverty line, and the poor infrastructure of the areas those citizens inhabit. The United States itself is labeled as a third world country when talking about areas of Detroit for example, and the wealth inequality starting to resemble that of Brazil and India. You might take exception to the term "Third World Country" because it is primarily used pejoratively in public discourse, but I think it is fully warranted, since Brazil, India, and the United States have a lot they can be criticized about. The elite of these countries are not afraid of practicing unbridled greed, unbridled because they removed the bridle through corrupt practices, using their wealth to accumulate power over government. I say all of this as an American.

Of course countries can be criticized. There are so many wrong things here that I wouldn't even learn where to begin prioritizing the list of criticisms.

Things are getting better, we've managed to get ourselves out of the U.N. Hunger and Misery map. This is a victory, and not a small one. The past 12 years it has been the very first time in 500 years where there are no people starving to death.

Still, the problem of Brazil is not that "it is a poor country" or "it has poor areas" like others portray in a simplistic view. As you said, it brews out of a self-perpetuating wealth inequality where the gap keeps enlarging as rich get richer.

We'll always find things to criticize and still advances are made by focusing efforts on solving the very problems we surface with our criticisms.

Why would anybody pretend Brazil isn't poor?

Ok, we are not terribly poor people are starving around the streets, but salaries are very low, prices are very hard, wealth is very concentrated, and a huge share of the people live from government handouts.

That is not being rich.

Well, that way there is nothing to confront or solve because they are not poor and by inference there is no injustice.

It's like us saying, no, there is no racism in the US (or practically any place).

Your analogy between the terms 1st/3rd world country and that particular racial epithet is beyond absurd. To confirm this just try saying one or the other at work to test the reactions you get.

I am saying this because people do take offense on the 3rd world monicker. In many fields that term is considered offensive when used in public discourse. This is not a joke. What a group perceives as normal speech may be a term that in other circles is considered bad and better terms and classifications might be in place

I think only citizens of third-world countries are offended by the third-world monicker.

It is englightening to note that a false insult is usually shrugged off, and a true insult usually taken to heart.

The trick is to notice when the insult is true and modify your behaviour so that the insult is no longer applicable.

You can't just declare a common word to be offensive and get offended when people use it in a normal context and expect to have a reasonable conversation.

You don't know many 21st century identity-politics leftists, I guess. Try visiting Seattle :)

" if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal."

This is a weird attitude.

China is the #2 world economy but indisputably has a top 5 ranking for most impoverished people with hundreds of millions of impoverished people.

It is a great deal because it shows that the money is there and the problem lies elsewhere in society. A poor country with poor GDP and HDI is in a very hard situation. A country with high GDP and poor HDI has a chance of solving its problems and rising up if it can solve its wealth inequality.

Brazil in the past decade made huge advances in that. We are a recent democracy, we've been a military dictatorship for a long time. In our couple decades as a democratic country we've managed to get lots of good things done but of course there are millions impoverished and we're not even close to solving anything. Still the new social programs, the fact that millions moved our of the misery level, this is great.

If we could solve wealth distribution and opportunity, this could be a really great place. Our problem is not the lack of money but the concentration of it and the concentration of access to infrastructure and opportunities as well.

You are continuing to confuse GDP and GDP per capita

> Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy

In terms of GDP per capita Brazil is 76th, bellow the world average.

Also bellow places like Uruguay, Argentina and say Botswana.

It's a poor country.

> division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today

> Its akin to saying the N-word

I'm sorry, what?

How can you even compare these two things, I can't imagine anyone finding "3rd world" offensive (After all, you don't use it to refer to people... do you?) . Especially when it's objectively true.

In many political science contexts and academies the "3rd world" monicker is considered offensive and obsolete. I am not joking, people do take offense on this term and classification scheme...

'Third world country' is an ambiguous term and a bit of a misnomer, because it originally meant 'a country aligned with neither West or East' (during the Cold War). Its use has become conflated with that of 'developing country', because the two meanings overlapped in practice. It is also considered derogatory due to its ambiguity and general connotation of colonial superiority.

It helps to be aware of those connotations if you choose to use a term like that (which can be a conscious choice to express your position). Although I agree that comparing it with racial slurs like 'nigger' is not really appropriate, there is some similarity in that these are words that are slowly moving out of the modern vocabulary appropriate for civilised discourse.

Just use 'developing country'.

Not a "coup", you know that.

> Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word.

Thank you.

Great response! (Y) Nice to see people like you here.

>> on the verge of a coup

I was with you up until this line.

there is no coup in place in brazil, stop spreading fud

The only people that say there is no coup going on are people supporting the coup. Please get informed about this discussion.

Ask the supreme court then: http://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/ministros-do-stf-dizem-que-im...

Whenever they're not making official rulings, what judges of the STF say is just a matter of personal opinion. To validate the impeachment these judges need to rule on the validity of the charges raised against president Rousseff.

And they will rule in favor when it comes to the senate, just as they expressed in the link that they would.

Saying "there's a coup!" is cheap government propaganda. The impeachment is proceeding according to the law and the charges are serious.

By force of law, judges are not allowed to pre-judge, i.e., to express to the public what they will decide on the bench. Suggesting the opposite is the exact definition of propaganda. This impeachment will only be legal if the supreme decides so, and that can only happen when they sit to judge this issue. Until then, the whole process is proceeding in judicial limbo. It can quite rightfully be termed as a coup.

No, it's not a political limbo. It got voted in the congress just as the law requires and is awaiting the voting in the senate just as the law requires it. The president of the STF presides the hearing on the senate where testimonies are gathered, and the STF votes for the impeachment. It's not "a coup" just because it hasn't reached that state yet. Stop spreading misinformation.

You are the one not well informed. The STF allowed the process to continue because it doesn't want to interfere with the prerogatives of the congress. But in the STF hearing of 4/14, they decided that the accusations need to be analyzed by the judges for the process to be valid. This means that the supreme court can stop this process to decide on the criminal charges that have been made against president Rousseff when they see fit, and this will certainly happen before the end of the process. Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.

>The STF allowed the process to continue because it doesn't want to interfere with the prerogatives of the congress. But in the STF hearing of 4/14, they decided that the accusations need to be analyzed by the judges for the process to be valid.

This is the case for EVERY IMPEACHMENT proceeding. It's called separation of powers.

>Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.

Except there are criminal charges, in this request and in the dozen other requests that are awaiting. Stop spreading misinformation.

The impeachment process is strictly following the Constitution and being closely monitored by the Supreme Court. The majority of the Brazilian population, the majority of deputies and the majority of senators support it. The majority of foreign watchers consider it a legitimate process. It is not a coup by any stretch of the imagination.

A valid impeachment needs to follow from legitimate charges of wrongdoing according to the constitution. The charges against the president have not been ruled as crimes, unlike what happened for example to Mr. Collor de Mello in the 90s. The charges are merely accusations, which need to be proved beyond doubt. Therefore, the whole process is illegal. The congress and the majority of the country are betting on the fact that the charges will be considered as real crimes by the supreme court, but there is a lot of questions if this will eventually happen (contrary to what the media is promoting). The government, on the other hand, is pretty sure that there is no crime involved. Because of the shaky ground of the whole process, a large number of jurists consider the whole thing to be a coup.

Se voce gosta tanto assim da Dilma, por que nao volta a morar la? Deve ser muito comodo para voce defender o governo do PT sentadinho ai em Nova York, ne? Queria ver se voce fosse um dos mais de 11 milhoes de desempregados!

Quando eu morava la e trabalhava para uma grande empresa de telecom, antes mesmo do escandalo do mensalao, eu vi o Lula roubando bem na minha frente, recebendo 150 mil reais por mes de propina disfarcados de "prestacao de servicos de consultoria" (a forma preferida de agir da quadrilha do PT) atraves da empresa do filho dele. Servicos que obviamente nunca foram prestados: a epoca, a G4 sequer tinha funcionarios!

Sinceramente, eu nao ligo se a Dilma vai ser impichada porque jogou papel de bala no chao. Ela fraudou as eleicoes, jogando a economia no lixo no processo. O PT esta transformando o Brasil na nova Venezuela. Independentemente de qual argumento formal pelo qual efetivamente consiga justificar-se, ela merece ser deposta.

Quem deveria se informar sobre tudo o que realmente esta acontecendo por la e voce. Voce fica so nas superficialidades.

Trouxa.

Tinha que ser golpista mesmo pra entrar em baixaria... procura tua turma.

Defensor de bandido. Continue assistindo tudo de longe sem se importar com as pessoas que sofrem nas maos do governo mais corrupto da historia do Brasil.

Falta uma semana so para acabar a farsa petista, para sempre.

A Dilma deveria ter sido presa em flagrante por obstrucao de justica ao nomear Lula ministro as vesperas da prisao preventiva dele ser decretada.

http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/reinaldo/geral/finalmente-jano...

There's no coup, stop spreading misinformation.

Thank you very much for the information. I stated something without the whole picture, and a lot of people replied.

I will stand by my comment that Brazil is rather technologically advanced with respect to how net-savvy their population is. I wrongly stated that Brazil is 3rd-world... And as another user points out, Brazil "meerly" suffers from deep corruption.

However, in my defense, I shall contend that the simple existence of "favelas" in Brazil is perceived to be a very 3rd world to me, an isolated, white American.

If "favelas" are sign of being 3rd world, what about homeless people, or does your "isolation" prevent you from seeing them?

Favelas are a world fenomenon. We call them by various names, chantytowns, slums, whenever there is a long-term concentration of low-income classes without access to infrastructure but requiring living quarters near middle and upper income classes due to work reasons these tend to appear.

Check out recent documentaries on Favelas, it will probably surprise you in both positive notes and also on horrible notes as well. Favelas are a cultural part of Rio in a way that most slums elsewhere are not. Favelas are intertwined with higher-income classes in the urban areas where they occupy the many hill areas of Rio. They dictate music and trends for millions of people and are a huge part of what makes Rio into Rio.

Still our corrupt governments, crimelords, militias, and consumerist culture makes those places prone to crime and violence.

Talking to you and taking you as an "isolated white american", pick some violence-prone neighborhood in your state and imagine if you could break it up into small areas and sprinkle that on top of your most prized real state area. This is Rio, where poor and rich live couple streets away from each other. In many places in the U.S. such neighborhoods occur away from higher-income regions in suburbs or far away districts, here, it is all mixed and that leads to a lot of confusion for foreigners.

Favelas are also a sympton of the lack of infrastructure. Mass transit in Rio is a joke and living/real state is very expensive. Favelas are the only solution for millions that need to work in the city but can't afford to live anywhere better. It is a self-perpetuating problem where people are born to these neighborhood and lack the access to education and opportunities that would enable life changing events that would move them and their families into better conditions.

Long story short: our governments (federal, state and city) sucks. People keep electing corrupt people. No one knows a way out of this mess.

> "No one knows a way out of this mess."

Create and promote news outlets that represent the interests of the people. This also gives a platform for non-corrupt people to run for office. That's one potential solution I've found for the problems in my own country. Do you think it would help in Brazil?

The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country, even though it has quite a global influence in industries such as consumer electronics, automotive, semiconductors, and steel.

edit: Apologies, looks like I was completely wrong since the source online I looked at incorrectly defined SK as economically undeveloped (I looked further and SK is in the G20, which would clearly make it a developed nation), and I was unaware of the Cold War era designation that commenters have pointed out to me.

I was always confused why SK would be considered a 3rd world country when my own impression from its industrial strength was that it should be a 1st world country, so I'm glad that I've been corrected.

SK is absolutely first world

He's probably using the technical term from international relations, according to which "third world" meant neither aligned with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Not only is that wrong (the Republic of Korea was and is about as closely aligned with the U.S. as a country can possibly be), but it's confusing, since what was clearly meant in the context of this thread was the different, colloquial meaning of "1st world" meaning "developed" and "3rd world" meaning poor.

Regardless, SK is unambiguously 1st world according to either definition.

South Korea isn't, but Switzerland and Sweden, by virtue of being neutral is a third world country in the original defintion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.

> Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.

No, you didn't. Angola was never both a country and part of the First World (Portugal was part of the First World when the term was coined, and Angola was part of Portugal then; when Angola became independent, the regime was Cuban-backed and Soviet-allied, and thus it was part of the Second World.)

> The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country

By both the common current common informal usage (of relatively developed economies) and the original definition (nations allied with the US in the Cold War), South Korea is a first world country.