4. Egypt is really a third world country with poor roads.
16. Folks who say the US is a "third world country" need to get out more.
And of course we had a goodly number of really fat people on board.
I don’t want to hijack
@Cincydawg’s otherwise pleasant Travels and Impressions thread, so I’ll post my unsolicited perspective here:
America has people living on the sidewalks too, especially in the Pacific Coast cities, though overall, yes, the U.S. is incomparably better off than what’s to be encountered in the third world. But what’s vital to point out is the defining difference between the homeless in America and the rest of the world’s homeless. The masses of beggars seen in New Delhi, or the seven hundred thousand slum dwellers of Nairobi’s Kibera district, or throughout the unpowered barrios across Mexico – homelessness persists across the third world because of
widespread poverty. Whereas in America, 99% of those living on the streets are there because of
substance abuse.
In my own West Coast neighborhood, where “post-COVID” monthly homeless counts by city social workers are topping 2,000, this quote from a Portland non-profit homeless outreach comes to my mind nearly everyday:
“Substance abuse is well documented as a contributor to homelessness, but it’s also established as a byproduct created by the trauma of living on the streets.“For the rest of the world, replace “substance abuse” with “severe poverty”:
“Severe poverty is well documented as a contributor to homelessness, but it’s also established as a byproduct created by the trauma of living on the streets.“For all the many ways America stays a head above systemic plights plaguing the Third World – unstable currencies, endemic government corruption, permanent economic stagnation, severe poverty, and selectively enforced laws to name a few – along with obesity, America is uniquely suffering a targeted drug addiction reality. This is compounded by three fronts –
A) the vast over-prescription of highly addictive medications such as Percocets, Benzodiazepines, Adderall, Ambien, and Anti-depressants…
B) the rising recreational consumption of designer party drugs such as ecstasy, acids, and especially cocaine which is often supplemented with pills from Group A…
AND C) the focused influx of heroin, meth, counterfeit pills from Group A, and especially Fentanyl which is noticeably spiking ongoing overdose fatalities.
All three groups reinforce each other. A highly addictive Benzodiazepine like Klonopin, meant to treat panic disorders but somehow the sixth most prescribed medication in the U.S, conditions its consumers (mostly young women) to onset drug dependency, thus greatly increasing the willingness Benzo consumers will opt for the dirtier street substances of Group C.
My point in all this is America has a uniquely worrisome drug problem because America is the
wealthiest and most willing drug consumer across global drug market – A)
wealthiest, because America can afford to sustain its drug habit AND B)
most willing because decades of over-prescribing, dating back to Valium, has conditioned large portions of the population to drug dependency.
Nowhere else in the world is facing such a steep rise in overdose deaths:
