IDK. I just recently passed through Pine Ridge, SD and what I saw there was on par with just about any non-warzone levels of poverty shown in movies. Dogs and trash roam the streets freely, most people either walking or riding in cars that at best could be called "unsafe", dirt everywhere, houses covered in graffiti or just straight up collapsing from lack of repair.
The US has a huge number of insanely wealthy people and a large percentage of people "above the poverty line", but the people under the poverty line live a life that is almost a distant from you as you are from a typical multimillionaire, and there are easily millions of them.
Im the last to deny that the U.S. does have poverty pockets that can sometimes bee entire lagoons, but you can't fairly compare it to most of the world's third world countries in all but the most extreme, relatively isolated examples.
Truly, go live in a developing country, even one that's considered decently wealthy by the standards of developing countries (Mexico is a good example) and you'll see the difference very quickly if you leave any of the compact, wealthy, tourist-oriented bubbles of society.
I live in such a country and comparing it to the U.S. as a whole is absurd. Even most of poor America is absurdly wealthy and reasonably well run by the standards of much of the world, though as your example shows, exceptions do apply, though they're not always by forced circumstance so much as unconscious choice.
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IDK. I just recently passed through Pine Ridge, SD and what I saw there was on par with just about any non-warzone levels of poverty shown in movies. Dogs and trash roam the streets freely, most people either walking or riding in cars that at best could be called "unsafe", dirt everywhere, houses covered in graffiti or just straight up collapsing from lack of repair.
The US has a huge number of insanely wealthy people and a large percentage of people "above the poverty line", but the people under the poverty line live a life that is almost a distant from you as you are from a typical multimillionaire, and there are easily millions of them.
Im the last to deny that the U.S. does have poverty pockets that can sometimes bee entire lagoons, but you can't fairly compare it to most of the world's third world countries in all but the most extreme, relatively isolated examples.
Truly, go live in a developing country, even one that's considered decently wealthy by the standards of developing countries (Mexico is a good example) and you'll see the difference very quickly if you leave any of the compact, wealthy, tourist-oriented bubbles of society.
I live in such a country and comparing it to the U.S. as a whole is absurd. Even most of poor America is absurdly wealthy and reasonably well run by the standards of much of the world, though as your example shows, exceptions do apply, though they're not always by forced circumstance so much as unconscious choice.