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MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

theintellectualist.co

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Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#151

Post by coldtea »

raverbashing wrote: post #83
CuriouslyC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen places in Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia that looked every bit as third world as rural Philippines/Vietnam. What the US lacks is urban poverty in the form of shantytowns. This is because unlike most third world nations, we quickly raze them when and find excuses to incarcerate the people who live there. If we were more permissive, we'd certainly have them too.

Rural does not mean poor/3rd world In the same way there's a lot of wealthy places in let's say Mexico City and other capitals of 3rd world countries

>Rural does not mean poor/3rd world

Yes, but parent compared places in the US to rural AND poor/3rd world places.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#152

Post by alistairSH »

naasking wrote: post #147
ethbro wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a pretty strong article a while back (and I assume parent likely also read) that sunshine laws and a decrease in special interest spending ultimately increased partisanship and decreased compromise. Reason being that previous periods of American legislative politics were characterized by back room deals unknown to the public. This afforded politicans an opportunity to strike bargains with the opposition wit…

> Which do you want more: non-partisan cooperation or absolute-transparency? Except you can have both as long as you ensure factual standards for news reporting.

Can you?

With the American primary election system, legislators are driven to cater to their most extreme constituents. With transparency, they can't work across the aisle AND also win a primary. At least with pork barrel, they get a tangible thing to point to while campaigning to attempt to appease constituents.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#153

Post by dpierce9 »

fiatpandas wrote: post #26

How long until we see favelas in the US? Low income areas completely devoid of economic opportunity, more or less ceded by local municipalities, with lawless informal economies and virtually no basic city services? Or do we already have them by another name?

Visit West Baltimore. It isn't a favela in the sense of either density or construction but in terms of missing economic opportunity, informal economy, very weak city services.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#154

Post by VLM »

bhouston wrote: post #80

Is this just happening in the US or is it also happening across many other "Western/European" nations? I wonder if it is isolated or widespread in part because there will be some equalization as other developing nations rise -- like China and India.

Demographics is destiny, so yes. Particularly demographics of the youth.

If you import your population from 1800-Ireland and 1800-Germany in the 1800s, in 2017 you end up with a country like 2017-Ireland or 2017-Germany. In other words, pretty nice.

If you demographically replace the existing population (and what, precisely, was wrong with the existing population, such that we have to replace them, other than their race?) then you end up with the immigrant's country, but located here. Surely Somali in 2117 is not going to be a paradise, likewise USA in 2117 will be the same as Somalia, no paradise, thats for sure.

There is no magic dirt. Anglos taking over Hawaii didn't turn anglos into Hawaiians. Anglos taking over the midwest USA didn't turn the anglos into native americans. Likewise the replacement of native cultures with imported cultures means the annihilation of the former cultures and replacement by the invaders. The USA will be a moderately poor Spanish speaking hispanic nation. Europe will be a moderately poor Muslim caliphate.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#155

Post by eevilspock »

Kaizyn wrote: post #84
kristofferR wrote: post #2

Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness…

First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. The difference is quite important. Secondly, to attribute the problems to the constitution is mistaken. That founding document is the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total disaster for the country. Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protectio…

Taxonomies are not always mutually exclusive.

The other answers remind me of my son as a toddler: FURIOUS as he explained: "It is NOT green. It is ROUND!!"

"It is not a democracy, it is a republic" is every bit as mistaken.

Read the rest at: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-a-dem...

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#156

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

maxerickson wrote: post #77
Karellen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a few examples of poor nations that are not being exploited by global capitalism?

North Korea and Cuba have been pretty well isolated from capitalism. You could also look at countries in Africa that don't have extensive resource extraction (compared to those that do).

As an asside North Korea does ship workers abroad to work as slave laborers.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#157

Post by skocznymroczny »

joelrunyon wrote: post #89
raverbashing wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural does not mean poor/3rd world In the same way there's a lot of wealthy places in let's say Mexico City and other capitals of 3rd world countries

3rd world means non-NATO aligned states (or communist aligned states). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

you mean non-communist aligned states. First world = NATO, second world = communist bloc, third world = everyone else

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#158

Post by cavanasm »

anovikov wrote: post #114
nkohari wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in fixing the problem the article discusses, this is pretty much exactly the wrong approach. You would actually be hard-pressed to find a solution more diametrically opposed to fixing the problem.

My belief is that post-scarcity society with very high technological unemployment and universal democracy are fundamentally incompatible. People who are net recipients from the government, should not vote, or they will vote the society into collapse. Can they ever vote for anything but more free stuff? Other problems are fixable with more attention/funding to law enforcement, and yes using all the AI toys: crime pred…

America largely disproves this already. The highest proportion of net recipients of federal government benefits are from poor rural deeply conservative states that form a substantial part of the base of the Republican party, which has made rolling back those benefits a primary goal.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#159

Post by votepaunchy »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #70
phkahler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the division in US politics comes from the way representatives are influenced. By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent. The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in.…

> By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent Representatives do spend time in their own states. They also need a central place to meet. No country or system does this differently. > The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyon…

You can't just "roll back" Citizens United other than amending the Constitution or having a future Supreme Court overturn the ruling.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#160

Post by ab5tract »

danieltillett wrote: post #47
kristofferR wrote: post #2

Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness…

This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but the reason is the number of elected representatives has not kept pace with the population growth. When the USA was founded there were about 20,000 electors per representatives and now in some seats there are over a million. If you want representation you need to be able to meet and talk to your rep - more importantly they need to be able to acquire your vote without the nee…

I agree fully! Apparently they stopped adding representatives when they filled up the space in the capital building. I've been intending for ages to pull up the ratio mandated by the constitution to see how many "missing" representatives we have today.
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