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Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

While I don't think the US is, de jure, a third-world country, I completely believe that it is, de facto, for many. I am on my way back from Memphis and onto Detroit, and both of these cities and their home states have plenty of areas that look unbelievably impoverished. Based on what I've seen from my years of traveling the country, it would not surprise me if most of the country had this problem. It's really sad.

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I am not sure how a country becomes a Third World country _de jure_. Does it apply for membership in the Third World, sign a treaty to join the coterie of developing economies? Does the Supreme Court rule in a landmark case brought to it to finally settle the country's global status?

Could this be a case of "I don't think that word means what you think it means"? :-)

Can we be a little more charitable and stick to the topic?

De jure "Third World", would mean that the country is either poor, or developing, possibly industrialized[2], and rightfully such[1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=de+jure&oq=de+jure

de jure - denoting something or someone that is rightfully such.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

"Because many Third World countries were extremely poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, India and China now more commonly referred to as part of BRIC."

"Over the past few decades since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has been used interchangeably with the least developed countries, the Global South, and developing countries, but the concept itself has become outdated in recent years as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world."

I would say that America in its current state is more simillar to one of the BRICS nations. It has levels of poverty/wealth disparity that will be familiar to anyone who has spent enough time in South Africa or Brazil but simply do not exist in most parts of western Europe.

What countries don't have any impoverished neighborhoods?

Developed ones.

A more serious answer: each country has impoverished neighborhoods. The difference between developed countries and developing ones is the magnitude of the impoverished neighborhoods.

So far I haven't seen any really big slums in Germany, for example.

Then you obviously havent been to Halle/Silberhöhe. But as you said, the difference is the magnitude. The scale of informal economies is certainly higher in Brazil, Honduras or Colombia. While here, even in problematic spots of certain cities, you will have the occasional criminal, the economic situation of a whole city is not dependent on it.

Apart from a few trailer encampments of sinti/roma there really aren't. Those usually get demolished after a few month.

https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-slums-in-Switzerland

how is comparing a small affluent country to a large and econ diverse one even remotely fair?

i would not be aware of one in switzerland

a handful of small, affluent European nations. That's it

As I stated above:

3rd world means non-NATO aligned states (or communist aligned states).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

Unless the US turns communist, it can not be a 3rd world country.

Did you even read the link you posted? It states that the definition of what the "third world" is is changing, right in some of the first paragraphs.

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