The comment I replied to said "it's feeling more like a third world country", I replied "no it's not even close to an actual third world country". I don't see how you could then derive that I meant "therefore it's not important".
Are third world countries the only place where things need fixing?
> I would argue that the relative freedom of movement forces residents in Europe to confront the inequality in their everyday lives.
Imagine you see China today, let's say Shenzhen skyline. 20 years in future you go there and all lights are out, windows are broken and homeless people everywhere, streets are filled with dirt and woman are scared to go out when it gets dark. If I then tell you "well, looks like some poor people moved there, everyone is moving closer together, that's why we see some problems here"..... Nooo! It would be some massive government failure that is responsible.
> You can't then come along and say
Of course I can. That is also my experience. According to OP many third world countries they visited seem to be handling this better than places like Paris, but imo it's just because they have the power to sweep the problem under the rug. I don't think that is the solution we should aim for.
Oh and btw
> You can't come along and pick some worse example from another place.
I didn't pick them, OP did. I literally would not have replied to OP had they not invoked the "turning to 3rd world country" drivel.
> but imo it's just because they have the power to sweep the problem under the rug
OP talks about decline in a certain place. It has NOTHING to do with sweeping problems under the rug. Why not? Because the "under the rug sweeping" didn't happen 20 years ago either! So why did things get worse, instead of better? Because of bad policies, number #1 being bad migration policies which is not merit based. This happend in whole western Europe and turns cities into what OP described, while eastern Europe cities remain what was Paris 20 years ago. So please stop denying OP or anyone to say "wow, it got so much worse here over the years"....
Now the reason I write in an angry way and the reason I'm so upset, is that there is no solution to these problems. Quite the opposite, it will only get worse. But that's another topic. So sorry if my words were a little aggressive.