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by oblio 16 days ago
Because they go together.

The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere.

The hallmark of developing or underdeveloped countries is precisely the staggering levels of inequality.

Not everyone is poor in a developing/underdeveloped country. Quite a few people there live lives that would make upper middle classes in developed countries blush. Life "just" sucks for the majority of people there.

2 comments

> The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere.

Nope:

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

Developed-but-very-unequal, and less-developed-but-more-equal are a thing.

Wealth is a lagging indicator.

Also, I have my own standard (https://xkcd.com/927/):

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

Many underdeveloped African countries have low Gini.

Do you prefer perfect equality in poverty, or some inequality and some wealth, a mixture of coexisting inequality and wealth.

Correlation is not causation.

Would you say USA is a developed country, considering for example Los Angeles slums? And there's a bigger inequality between Elon musk and a well paid software developer than between a poor person in a developing country and a rich politician from that country.

> Would you say USA is a developed country

I'm not saying anything (directly). We have definitions for these things:

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

According to any way we currently categorize developed countries, the US is one of them.

Acording to what you say:

- "The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere."

- "they go together" (poverty and inequality).

- The US is a developed country.

- The US has a great wealth inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...

What you say implies contradictions.