I did say they all used to be dirt poor just a few decades ago. The questions we all need to ask is how come some countries could transform themselves from 3rd, 4th world into 1st world in such a short time whereas others could not. Those countries range from one party rule to democratic to dictatorship/communist.. Perhaps we can learn something positive from them?
A very common characteristic: They all had *relatively* less wars thus *relatively* low military spending. If you look at all the 3rd world countries that we categorize as 3rd world countries today, they have all been ravaged by wars, both external and internal so they had all quite high military spending vs their GDP. It's very hard to invest in your own country's infrastructure to improve its economy and for people to work hard to make money when you are constantly spending all the money on buying weapons and drafting people to fight and die. United States' economy grew to a different level because Bill Clinton's government invested in internet technology and built all the network structure in the 1990's that forever started the information revolution. Imagine if he spent that much money on starting another war fighting other countries like his successor George W. Bush, you think we would still be enjoying the wealth today? No United States would be a 2nd world country today. And at the same time, China's economy grew 20X and catapulted itself from a 3rd world country to now a 2nd world country during the 8 years that the United States under George W. Bush decided to start the war against the Middle East creating all sorts of problems today.
Am 62 years, all in India. Seen almost everything in India Never seen or heard anyone going to a shop with his tooth brush to get a dash of toothpaste. So please be careful of the journalist trying to feed such descriptions. His sole purpose is to catch your attention. And not to introduce India to you. There is poverty in some sections of population. However to compare the measure of Purchasing Power Parity is a better measure which makes INR 5 equal yo USD 1.
As regards the USA, its a great country and has some problems like any country or person has. I spent one month in USA and traveled to 10 cities across. There are two main issues it has. One is shifting of large manufacturing base to China. US has to diversify its supplier base. This is a common sense Materials Management principle. In US economic growth is coming from FAANG companies and stocks. This is innovation based, and difficult growth. It can melt fast. Company like Facebook will have its valuation crash if free subscribers decelerate. Remember Yahoo. So some manufacturing may also be needed. Will post second thing after dinner.
Second difficulty US is having is that lots of productive manpower and taxes are going into defending countries other than itself. NATO, South Korea, Taiwan, Afghanistan, and the like. Historically any national that got into too many wars ended worse off, losing its geopolitical status. Trump is disliked by many but is trying to extricate US from these over-commitment.
America had one of the largest or the largest percentage of middle class in the world.... untill the Lefty/Commie/DemoCraps got their hooks deep enough into us. The Left doesn't want us to be successful and financially well-off... because we'd have "choices". They want us to be poor and dependent upon government so that we can be governed (controlled) by them.