How is the healthcare system in India? Google gives me conflicting answers.
What's that got to do with Bangladesh?
I was thinking of Bangalore- sorry. I've been awake entirely too long and didn't go for the morning run to refresh yet.
Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#22I noticed when traveling through Central America, that while extreme poverty is everywhere, homelessness seems to be quite rare (with the caveat that I didn't spend much time in the capital cities, so the situation there may be different). I think there are two reasons for it: 1) People don't seem to be as mobile, in general, and you'll find 3 generations of family living very close to each other quite often. I was h…
Your observations are correct with respect to the part of Africa I come from. When you come of age you just pick an empty piece of land next to your family and build your home. We used to use wood from trees you cut down yourself but now the trend is to use bricks. The bricks are "home made", and don't go through any quality checks. All in all there are few homeless people.
It is also possible for a whole family to live in two rooms. I don't come from a family that does that but it happens. Everyone sleeping on the floor with a bed for the parents.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#23I think a lot of the resentment felt by the rural American poor has to do with their perception that they are constantly ignored or overlooked, while similarly impoverished inner-city minorities are at least given some kind of institutional sympathy. It's hard to say how true this really is, or how much of it is simply further fuel for pre-existing racism, but apparently this perception is ubiquitous enough that it can be leveraged to win national elections.
I will say the events of the last year have definitely opened my eyes to the situation. The thing I've noticed is that it actually is harder to sympathize with the white, rural poor than it is with the inner-city minorities, at least for me - even though I want to sympathize and I acknowledge their suffering is probably more or less equal to the inner-city minority poor. I suppose the reason I find it more difficult to feel equivalent sympathy is that it's hard to get over the fact that the white rural poor seem to constantly cling to counter-productive political/world-views that perpetuate their poverty and act against their interests. I mean it's just really hard to allocate significant sympathy towards a large voting-bloc that seems to blame all their problems on terrorism and immigration. But then again, perhaps I am generalizing - I mean I'm just a clueless liberal living in my NYC bubble so what do I know anyway?
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#24How is the healthcare system in India? Google gives me conflicting answers.
I am originally from India and yummyfajitas's (Regular HNer) experience is very representative. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2015/medical_tourism.html
That's interesting. Some of my family in the US have done similar medical tourism in Slovakia.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#25I noticed when traveling through Central America, that while extreme poverty is everywhere, homelessness seems to be quite rare (with the caveat that I didn't spend much time in the capital cities, so the situation there may be different). I think there are two reasons for it: 1) People don't seem to be as mobile, in general, and you'll find 3 generations of family living very close to each other quite often. I was h…
Just want to be clear that I don't want to paint to rosy a picture of what poverty looks like in Central America. It's not uncommon to see a single mom with a family of three or more kids living in a tin shack with a dirt floor. It's fucking heartbreaking to see. And you know that you could spend a few hundred bucks and help change their lives, but there are a billion more people just like them in the world. We in the west have no idea how good we have it. It's really hard to understand how the rest of the world lives unless you see it directly.
Even just watching a documentary doesn't really capture the scale of it like spending three months traveling from town to town and seeing nothing but abject poverty every where you go. You really do get an understanding of why people risk their lives to come to the US.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#26I was born in an African village, literally in a mud hut. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a village. The town I grew up in wasn't far from the village so I spent holidays in the village too. I now work in IT and try keep up with the latest frameworks. That is I am not concerned with starving to death and I have health insurance. If I compare my upbringing with my daughter's, there is nothing to compare. We wa…
Off topic but I view success as not where you are in life but how far you've come. You've got to have a pretty high score of life's leaderboard.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#27How is the healthcare system in India? Google gives me conflicting answers.
For most cases the price transparency in Indian medical system really really beats the American experience. If you have a Cadillac plan in America and you have really cutting edge advance needs that is when American system is both tolerable and better.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#28I think a lot of the resentment felt by the rural American poor has to do with their perception that they are constantly ignored or overlooked, while similarly impoverished inner-city minorities are at least given some kind of institutional sympathy. It's hard to say how true this really is, or how much of it is simply further fuel for pre-existing racism, but apparently this perception is ubiquitous enough that it c…
Would you sympathise with someone who blames his problems on slavery?
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#29I was born in an African village, literally in a mud hut. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a village. The town I grew up in wasn't far from the village so I spent holidays in the village too. I now work in IT and try keep up with the latest frameworks. That is I am not concerned with starving to death and I have health insurance. If I compare my upbringing with my daughter's, there is nothing to compare. We wa…
Funny (ironic?) thing is that each incremental advance in civilization may be a good thing in isolation and, given the choice between adding benefit X to their existing situation or not, most people would choose adding benefit X without hesitation.
And yet, somehow the sum of hundreds of such benefits (secure food, healthcare, fire departments, internet) doesn't lead to a significant increase in average happiness. In fact it may be that we in the west are less happy than people living in stone age societies.
Re: Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta?
#30The answer is simple, don't take what I say seriously, take what I do seriously.
7 out 10 times you are better of in Mississippi delta.
The other 3 times are both cultural and relative wealth.