no no its not. Its sick right now due to some jackasses in power because of the moron public of ours that elected them.. but by no means is it a freaking 3rd world country. Lets get real here!
What makes the United States a third world country is not the economic problems which has beset it as well as the rest of the world. The United States has become a third world country because its system of public education is ROTTEN and is becoming ROTTTENER with each passing day.
US debt is 65% of GDP, which is not much more than canada or germany. Italy is at 100%. So that puts it in perspective.
simon,,agree,,,the same crowd that bought into the hype that the free market takes care of itself because its in its own best interest not to do stupid things,,of course greed was factored out of these equations. Did the SEC have enough people investigating corps? There are reasons we didnt allow corps to be so large to become unsinkable as it were. The economic damage would be bad to the whole economy. The republicans actually wanted to make everyone invest in the stock market through there social security ensuring retirees would be poor. Can we ever trust republicans with important economic issues again? Look at other nations that went kaput before,,thailand,,argentina,russia,,we told them to allow free market forces to cleanse the filth out and the strong will survive,,we didnt do anything like that,,we bailed em out,,allowing the ceos there golden goodbye paychecks even though they bankrupted the corps. I would like our next president to pay off at least 90% of our almost 10 trillion in debt or have we already cracked 10 trillion?
The fact is .. every joe nobody in US thinks he can afford a mercedes and a 700,000 dollar home based on credit on a 5k/month salary ! Until the public starts changing its behavior rapidly we'll just go more and more in debt. And to do that .. there needs to be an economic shock .... lighting fire under the asses of Joe nobodies ... but the government is not letting that happen right now so the saga continues!
Add to that....no one swims or climbs fences to get into those countries even with their social programs. USA has and always will hold the "the dream" Temporary ill's.
Well...here's some "real" for you. I remember sitting in Econ 101 back in the day when we would laugh at the plight of the, then, ultimate 3rd world sh*t hole, Brazil. We wondered, in our case studies, how they would ever be able to pay back their loans. We figured that they probably wouldn't, but that the govt's. that loaned them money in the first place would continue to lend to them just to keep them afloat to protect their investment. I imagine that Chinese Econ 101 students are sharing that same laugh about the U.S. right now. Brazil was even too poor to fix their own roads. Hmmm...that sounds familiar. How many taxpaying U.S. citizens have driven off of collapsing bridges to their deaths on the way to work and back? Brazil had to pedal bicycles because they couldn't afford to drive cars. Damn...that also sounds like...no...can't be. Their citizens had no money. Wait...we have....oh...no, no we don't. We have "things" purchased with credit. We "own" very little. We have to have foreign govts. step in with Wealth Funds to bail us out because we have no cash. Their citizens lived in ramshackle homes and huts. That could NEVER happen here!....well...probably not...maybe. Hmmm. But, no...the BIG difference is that their govt. had to constantly step in to take control of this and that to keep something else from collapsing. That's just not going to happen...oh God...welcome to the 3rd world my friend. Here's your banana.