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Third World America

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23 pointscwan14 comments

It is sad to see some areas where people on average are doing significantly worse than the richest parts of the United States.

However, I find the choice of the term 'Third World America' to be particularly deceiving. Let's take Louisiana, for example, marked as amongst the worst regions according to the infographic. Median earnings are 28,000 and about 75% with at least high school education.

Now let's compare against Mexico's average. Mexico is not nearly as bad as other third world countries. Average earnings are about 7,000 USD/year [1] (and median earning is probably worse). Roughly have of Mexicans haven't completed their junior high school education (6th to 9th). These are national averages, though, which --unlike the infographic -- do not focus only on the poorest areas. The poorest areas are, of course, much worse.

I'm not trying to say with this that you shouldn't complain if others have it worse. I am just saying that this particular choice of wording is not realistic and, in my mind, took away from the credibility of the rest of the site .

[1] http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/12/07/index.php?section=econ... [2] http://simposio.asu.edu/2004/docs/mesas/2/suarez.pdf

I don't get it either. Why the ongoing comparisons with countries that are even worse off? Wouldn't it be better to look at countries in which there is less poverty, and see what they do better? (For example: many North European countries hardly have poverty as in "can't pay for food/housing" at all)

Because that angle has been tried repeatedly and is usually shrugged off by conservatives as 'too European, too socialist'. So, this is an attempt to point out that we're not in great shape and shame politicians into doing better for the people.

Conservatives will find it even easier to shrug off comparisons between the indebted, undereducated and underemployed in the US and the extreme poverty of the "Third World".

Whilst there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that relative poverty is actually more detrimental to people's happiness than absolute poverty, comparisons like this which conflate the issues and don't provide any stats to back their claims up are counterproductive.

I'm not saying extreme rhetoric doesn't work (see for instance effective campaigns which characterise a lifestyle more than half the world would consider well-off as a "living wage"), but I don't think it helps in this instance.

I think this angle doesn't work either. At least, on a personal level it wouldn't work: You can't shame someone who's not doing so well into performing better, by pointing at people that perform even worse. They would reply with "Right, so I'm doing comparatively well?".

BTW: I find it very typical that our posts get modded down.

You know things are bad when people start saying at least we're not Mexico.

Without scales or legends, one cannot tell if the range is from "great to good" or "good to bad".

I would be interested in seeing the same information normalized to other countries or at least given some solid numbers.

Third World was a Cold War era term meaning countries not aligned with NATO or the Soviet Block. I wonder how all those countries feel about the term being used as a pejorative.

That aside, the biggest failing I see is that the average earnings don't seem to be adjusted for the cost of living.

No, those were "nonaligned". Third World used to describe what's left if you remove the developed capitalist countries and the European socialist countries.

Indeed most of Latin America wasn't really neutral. They were "aligned" with NATO though not part of it.

Besides, the term has always been pejorative.

Scratching my head. What is the difference between not aligned and nonaligned in this context?

"Nonaligned" is an actual name used by a group of countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aligned_movement

Why is Nevada so particularly bad?

Some of it is that roughly 15% of the total population are in rural areas where the primary jobs available are in mining, or agriculture. Illegal immigrants make up a significant portion of the total population according to the latest numbers released by ICE. The number one industry in Nevada is tourism followed by mining. You don't need a highly skilled labor pool to fill a significant percentage of those jobs. The education budget has historically been dependent on revenues from the gaming (gambling) industry. You can guess where Nevada falls on education spending, graduation rates etc. Nevada ranks poorly in every social spending category so it's not just education that suffers. Poverty is also a huge issue, over 50% of the students in Washoe County live at or below the poverty line for example.

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