I guess you did not look under water in MED. Read my lips : NO FISH! It is not little fish like 90% less from the peak. In most remote places. All empty. So sad. People that used to live from fishing cannot any more. Now I guess they term them as criminals. Or maybe property boom keeping them from turning to one - for now...
When someone is getting mugged in the street and I see two individuals dressed in official looking police uniform, I can assume they'll be able to help. I guess in your world you would accuse me of profiling? In your world I should disregard common sense cues and randomly begin the process to get help to the victim? You forget one key point. The immigrants coming here are probably superior to the ones left behind. They probably have superior financial means, or a superior intelligence to be admitted to graduate college here on financial aid. Bottom line. Immigrants are always the best and the brightest of the lot. Unless they are refugees or illegal immigrants. Then we're back to the shitty people theory because 90% or more of refugees end up on the public dole. And their kids end up engaging in all types of criminal behavior. My shitty people theory still stands. A corollary to my shitty people theory: Most of these shitty people, in these shitty countries, are also religious bigots. It can also be in the west. Look in the deep south. Never saw a more sorry bunch of neanderthals anywhere else. Even the shitty Romanian street gypsy has better sense than a southern shitty bigot.
The Indo-European Aryan ancestors in India also live on dirt floors. So much for your biblical nonesense. Didn't anyone tell you the Old testament is a fairy tale based on Sumerian and Persian mythology? The Jews needed something to believe in when the Babylonians were shoving sticks up their ass. And as the Black slaves of the South, the oppressed will always take the religion of the Oppressor. The fact Jews hate Persians is a hilarity, given the Persians are the ones who are the only ones in history to give the jews everything they wanted. You should study the background of Purim to get a better idea.
Nothing. Which is probably why they are, in fact, catching up at a furious pace. About another 30 years and the world is going to look a whole lot more egalitarian than it does now. (Unless we do something incredibly stupid to mess things up)
Most of the argument here "that the poorer countries are doing badly in some sense or another" appears to be based on a world view that is 30 years out of date. If you want an update you might look at this ted talk which was given to the US State department in an attempt to upgrade their datasets. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html
Sorry Misthos, you did not answer the question. To quote the "Borg" - resistance is futile! jem has logic on his side here - you have resorted to ad hominem - not logic! -gastropod
The talented emigrate because they made a choice. These were their choices: 1) stay and fight the powers that be and create a better, lawful society - like the US founding fathers. or 2) get the fuck out and go to a society that's already at that lawful, meritocratic level. And why do I say this? My parents are immigrants. I have seen this firsthand. Villagers to millionaires. You're still wrong. ps - as for US southerners, my theory works on them too. And by the way, our lawful, meritocratic level of society is waning. But it is growing elsewhere. Back to my ebb and flow theory.
There are two ways to view humanity. The snapshot approach, and the movie approach - from beginning to end. If I were an alien and I landed on this planet for a brief visit and casually looked around, I would likely agree with jem. But if I "watched" civilizations come and go on this planet, and I watched wealth and societies ebb and flow thru time - and how those societies interacted with others - thru-out the planet, my conclusion is more compelling. It is logical.