The Expose: The USA entering the ‘Third World Nations’?

Boasting the world’s largest economy, aggregations of the multinationals and an array of top-notch global knowledge centres, the United States of America seems to be drifting away from the goal of ‘The Great America’ at a time when President Donald Trump wants to bolster this pitch. Yes, the term 'The Third World Nation' sounds a bit too alien while we refer to the US, but the downfall of the world’s largest economy seems inevitable. Indeed, its journey till now has been an example for the rest of the world, but the idea of ‘developed country’ for the US appears faded. It will be apt to term it an ‘economically and militarily powerful nation’ than to make it the leader of the developed world.

Over the last few months of this Covid-19 pandemic, anomalies of the healthcare system of the so-called most advanced country has been exposed. Its policies and readiness to tackle the pandemic could not even match some of the middle- or lower-income countries with limited budgets. The US says it is leading the world in the fight against the deadly virus but that seems to be only the political leadership. Mass graves in the country amid shortages of medical equipment reveal the fact.  According to the New York Times, even the ‘Third World Countries’ like Senegal is in a better condition. An Iowa man succumbed to death due to Covid-19 as he was first denied testing and twice denied ER admittance. At the same time, it was free in many countries like Germany and New Zealand. At a time when even Zimbabwe, Angola, Uganda, Nepal etc were in a strict nationwide lockdown, the US feared for an economic slip-off. That is ridiculous. Lives of people were put at stake, going against humanity.

The success of USA’s multibillion-dollar MNC’s does not define the failures of its society. Bearing the burden of 18.8 per cent teenage pregnancies in 2017 which is far greater compared to India where the same data was at 12.07 per cent in 2018, the US stands in dim light with insecure future of its younger generations. Critics might argue the authenticity of the information, but the trend has shown it this way. Surely this is an indicator of the void that the evolution of society has developed but of course, isn’t a good one.

Though the GDP per capita of the USA is approx. six times that of Mexico, a technically third world country, the data on ‘Child Relative Income Poverty Rate, 2016’ by the OECD puts light on a grim reality, the US had a poverty rate greater than Mexico. Even Latvia, Slovenia and Lithuania performed better. It does not end here yet. According to the reports of US Census Bureau 2018, seven states reported poverty rate greater than 16% which is a big number for a nation that leads the world in donations to the poor countries. I was shocked to see California having poverty figures as high as 20%, as data varied sharply across the races, in a report published by the Public Policy Institute of California. It also mentions the disability of families to meet their basic needs. That highlights the growing income disparity in the country. While the upper-income group has managed to make big strides in income, the share of lower- and middle-income groups have shrunk to a new low. In 2015, the income disparity in the US was far greater than that observed in Chile, Slovak Republic, Estonia.

Despite creating the best of the facilities for its people, biggest research hubs of the world and the universities where students from across the globe flock in numbers, the US is at the verge of failing in providing good education to its own children. The US which was once known to have best graduation rates among developed world now ranks poorly at 22^ND among the top twenty-seven countries. Moral education is also getting worse over time with seventy-five per cent of the crimes in the country being committed by the high school dropouts.

Representation of women in the top position of the political world in the US is also amid deep crisis. It not only ranks poorly at 77th  position but way behind many poorer and so called ' third world nations'. Take a look at a data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 2019. 

Crimes are generally judged as an indicator of underdevelopment or poverty. Breaking all these ideologies, the crime rates in the US are at a high of sixteen years, reports The Guardian. Hate crimes are seeing multi-fold jumps with crimes against the Sikhs tripling in a year from 2017. The case appears stark and clear when focused on certain states especially, again an indicator of concentrated or regional development.

Though the twenty-two trillion-dollar economy has enjoyed its superiority over many decades rather more than a century itself, that era of glory nears fading. Yes, it is, of course, true that this drastic downfall is not going to happen overnight, but it is happening, gradually and we are all its witnesses. With the rapid development across the rest of the world, the dependence on the US has also declined which was once the only option for many. Now it appears that the US is a country where people are attracted by the glitz and glam of its skylines but only fortunate few get the leisure of that. Shall we consider the United States of America entering the league of the ‘Third World Nations’? 

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