Is the USA a Developed Country?

[Farnhamia]

North Nebraska is no joke when it's compared to the German Empire. Your exports are 73% crops, 21% cattle, and 9% other. Our economy is weaker then pie crust and 58% of our population lives in poverty and 99.9% watch anime.

We post OOC only in the General forum.

[Infected Mushroom]

Developed= IM's utopia

No dogs and a police state isn't utopia

Eventually I think we'll have to do something about the dog problem.

For now though, my concerns are mostly with the guns in light of the recent Las Vegas incident.

[Infected Mushroom]

It could be that the Catalonia situation actually disqualifies Spain from the Developed category. I wouldn't know unless I understood Spain's situation better.

The stats of school shootings and gun crimes in Switzerland and Scandinavia PALE compare to the US numbers and proportions. Its not to say shootings don't happen elsewhere, just nowhere in the same frequency plane as in the USA.

It could also be that tobacco could disqualify Belgium. But again, I'd need to understand Begium's situation better. In general, not very uncommon for people in high economy countries to be dying due to health reasons so long as its at a relatively late age. Gun Violence though? Whole new different bag.

I think we're headed for no such thing as a developed country.

Headed for what?

[FelrikTheDeleted]

Eventually I think we'll have to do something about the dog problem.[...]

>implying that there is a dog problem

Dogs are bae.

[Liberalter]

Quite frankly, I think the bullshit you just spewed is absolutely ridiculous. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

But guns make it much easier for people to kill people.

[Galloism]

I think we're headed for no such thing as a developed country.

Headed for what?

Where eventually all countries are excluded from being developed countries because of X reasons. Ergo, there will be no such thing as a developed country.

[Proctopeo]

Quite frankly, I think the bullshit you just spewed is absolutely ridiculous. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

But guns make it much easier for people to kill people.

So do trucks, knives, cleaning fluid...

[The Batavia]

This thread is making my head hurt...

[Xelsis]

Because the Catalonians are citizens of one of those lovely western European "developed" countries you love so much, who are so 'socially advanced' because they can trust the government beating them into submission for the heinous crime of voting. You're making the argument that all developed countries must test the government because the government is trustworthy. It isn't. Catalonia's just one of many examples

You claimed there were never mass or school shootings in European countries. I gave you multiple examples from all of the big three and some Scandinavia and Switzerland for good measure. I even used your beloved Wikipedia for it. You still haven't addressed the claim.

Once again, as you ignored it once your point was disproved, there's twenty times more preventable deaths from a percentage point standpoint in Belgium from the tobacco difference with the U.S. than the gun difference. You're still hung up on less than one-third of one percent of deaths and ignoring far larger killers.

It could be that the Catalonia situation actually disqualifies Spain from the Developed category. I wouldn't know unless I understood Spain's situation better.

The stats of school shootings and gun crimes in Switzerland and Scandinavia PALE compare to the US numbers and proportions. Its not to say shootings don't happen elsewhere, just nowhere in the same frequency plane as in the USA.

And that reveals the problem of your picking and choosing. What you're asserting is that it's socially regressive to still arm oneself in fear of government tyranny, showing a lack of social capital, and that truly developed nations know to just trust the government totally without any fear of tyranny. Whenever that tyranny, however, does come up, and shows the need for distrusting the government, you kick that nation out of the club to preserve the illusion. Spain is just one example of a vast number that shows that distrust of government can be entirely rational-but you continue to insist that that basic distrust disqualifies the U.S. from being a developed country, even though it has given the U.S. the longest-running representative form of government in the world.

So now you've backtracked on your argument, from saying that said things happen only in the United States, to saying that they just happen more often in the United States. It's still wrong. Let's take a case study.

In the last ten years, there have been two "school shootings" (spree shootings with a firearm) in Finland, at Jokela in 2007, and at Kauhajoki in 2008. In the last ten years there have been six in the United States, at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Sandy Hook, Umpqa Community College, Oikos University, and Marysville. (We'll even count Santa Monica, which was a mass shooting that ended up at a college even though it doesn't fit the criteria, to make it seven, just to benefit your side even more.)

So, that decides it, right? Seven in the United States versus two in Finland? Except not really.

U.S. population: 325.1 million.
Finland population: 5.36 million.

So over the last ten years, that's one school shooting per 46.44 million people in the U.S., and one per 2.68 million people in Finland. The frequency of school shootings in Finland in the last decade is more than seventeen times higher.

Now, the last ten years is a pretty natural figure to use, but if you want to go and change the time window, feel free to. It's most likely going to improve the rate in Finland's favor relative to the United States-but it'll take a very constructed window to make it better.

The U.S. has more people than any European country by a huge number. For every person in Finland, there's more than sixty in the United States. So you can point at the U.S. having more mass shootings, or school shootings (they do) than other countries, but when you take a look at the per-capita frequency? America's no longer an outlier, and your argument, once again, crumbles.

It could also be that tobacco could disqualify Belgium. But again, I'd need to understand Begium's situation better. In general, not very uncommon for people in high economy countries to be dying due to health reasons so long as its at a relatively late age. Gun Violence though? Whole new different bag.

So you're ignoring major causes of death in favor of far less prevalent causes of death just because it's odd?

So, the U.S. is undeveloped because it has a lot more deaths to catamounts than in Europe, mostly on account of there being no catamounts in Europe, but because it's uncommon, even when it's a tiny percentage, those darn cats make that country undeveloped!

[Free Missouri]

No one ignores those things. You'll find the US scores pretty well compared to non-developed and developing countries on all of those, even if our crime rates are high and we have more gun murders than other developed nations. Your failure is in ignoring all other aspects of development- particularly economic, which is probably the most important, along with political- in favor of "safety", which you've sliced and diced to fit your stupid narrative.

Regardless of how economically powerful you are...

if you've got a country where so many people (non government) have guns, where every few months a major killing spree involving guns pops up and is the norm, where there is gun crimes and violent crime much higher than in the rest of the Developed world, and where large segments of the citizenry habitually exhibit the thinking of a society that is in a less advanced stage of social/political development (and so hasn't built up enough social trust/social capital) like:

"We can't trust the government. We need to individually own guns in case things break down or in case the government goes rogue."

"We can't trust the government to protect us. We need to individually own guns to protect ourselves from each other and from gangs."

It becomes less and less useful to think of the USA as a Developed country.

So now the standard for development is whether or not a population is willing to bow down to their government and trust it with absolute power.

If that's the case then I hope that the US never becomes fucking developed.

[Minoa]

The USA is a massive country with a diverse system of governance, so I think it is difficult to summarise the situation as it may vary greatly from state to state, and between federal policy and state policy.

[Longweather]

Headed for what?

Where eventually all countries are excluded from being developed countries because of X reasons. Ergo, there will be no such thing as a developed country.

Yeah, that's what it seems like we're looking at. It's been a "fun" ride.

[Dormill and Stiura]

Could somebody remind me why this thread still exists?

It seems more like a place for America-bashing and counter-arguments that will never be heard rather than actually discussing whether or not the United States is developed (which in and of itself is a redundant question, considering the US to my knowledge is usually seen as the basis of a developed nation).

[The New Fandom Republic]

This thread is bait y'all (myself included) should be ashamed for replying to dummy op. The guy had several illegal guns,no law that any freedom loving that would seem reasonable was going to stop that massacre from happening. Also op,you are scummy for making this thread to be quite honest.

[Holy Tedalonia]

In light of the Las Vegas shooting and other school shootings, gun crimes, and just the general widespread ownership of guns in the hands of civilians...

I have to ask the theoretical question:

Is the USA a Developed Country?

I have a feeling that despite the official classification of the USA as such (based on things like the economy) it may actually not be the case.

The USA has really high crime rates and the gun control is so out of control that its quite unlike other Developed countries. Does it still make sense to call the US a Developed country when so many people legally (and illegally) own firearms? Isn't this something we would instead expect to be happening in a less developed country?

Can the USA still be a developed country when things like Las Vegas where hundreds of people are killed/injured because of guns happen quite frequently?

At what point does the USA stop being a Developed country?

Please discuss. What is your definition of the Developed country and in light of the gun problems in the USA, is the USA still a Developed country?

In my view, the USA is not a Developed country, it has been misclassified.

I would define a Developed country primarily on its safety and crime rate though the economy plays a role. In light of this, I feel the USA no longer fits the label unless it can get rid of the gun problem.

A Developed country does not have such widespread gun ownership in the hands of the population. A Developed country does not have gun problems and gun crimes on the scale of the USA. A Developed country does not have such widespread illegal ownership of firearms, such high frequencies of school shootings, gun crimes, and incidents like Las Vegas where hundreds are killed/injured. It is inconsistent for a Developed country to have massive numbers of people walking on the streets who are not police, carrying firearms who can turn on each other.

A Developed country looks like Japan, Norway, Germany etc where most of the people don't own guns and you don't have gun incidents where dozens to hundreds are killed/injured. The USA is in need of massive reforms.

Switzerland is pretty low in terms of crime, yet guns are owned legally by many there.

[Gun Manufacturers]

No dogs and a police state isn't utopia

Eventually I think we'll have to do something about the dog problem.

For now though, my concerns are mostly with the guns in light of the recent Las Vegas incident.

BTW, we already have a gun control thread. This thread is supposed to be about whether or not the USA is a developed country (which it is).

[Ranoria]

"i think the USA isn't developed"
"it is, here's the literal definition of developed country, created over many decades by tons of very bright people and carefully measured"
"...well um that's a bad definition, it doesn't fit my poorly thought out bullshit narrative"

So we should equate economic power with development because the "experts" say so?

And ignore social, safety, and political aspects of development because its the norm to do?

Your safety argument is completely invalid, and it has been shown to be so multiple times. As for Politics, there are very different views in many different countries on how a government should be run. Many people don't see an extensive welfare system as a sign of a developed country. I personally do not. Because it is not a true indicator in and of itself, nor is any one type of government a true indicator of development, it is also a completely invalid argument. Simply because you do not agree with the way a government is run does not make it a primitive form of government. Finally, socially, America is certainly one of the more developed nations in the known world. You have to consider that human nature is a very fickle thing, and, as I believe I said before, there will always be bad apples in any orchard. As such, looking at raw statistics of just the United States, rather than a more broad perspective of the entire world, it's easy to think that America sucks. But it doesn't. It's the best, and I'll go to my grave saying that.

Gun crimes: Alright, please. Enough of that. It's been stated pretty clearly that you are, without a doubt, wrong that the US has an inproportional number of gun related homicides. Just some pictures, those always make stuff easier to understand. Honestly, this could just relate to homicides in general, as well.

Besides that, we're basically throwing anything bad going on in any country and you're saying that their status as being developed is in question. Are you even hearing yourself?

China's staggering pollution problems, perhaps?

Every country has it's problems, and most of them have big ones.

Europe:

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/07/14/STATISTA-SEX-ASSAULT-CHART.jpg

Poverty Rates around the world:

Are China, and many countries in Europe, not developed? Of course they are. They have their own issues within society, as does the United States. But to say that a country isn't developed because of a single problem (The gun homicides are a problem. A staggering one? No. Loss of life is always tragic, but the amount of gun deaths in the United States is not an astronomical number by any stretch), is ignorant, plain and simple. There is a simple lack of understanding of what the term 'developed country' means.

Eventually I think we'll have to do something about the dog problem.

For now though, my concerns are mostly with the guns in light of the recent Las Vegas incident.

BTW, we already have a gun control thread. This thread is supposed to be about whether or not the USA is a developed country (which it is).

Had to add that. This is just frikkin' adorable.

[United States of Red Dawn]

I could go so far as to say that the U.S. is obviously economically developed, but culturally underdeveloped. It has a disposable, superficial culture because of it's economic strength. Capitalism panders to the least common denominator.

[Taihei Tengoku]

I could go so far as to say that the U.S. is obviously economically developed, but culturally underdeveloped. It has a disposable, superficial culture because of it's economic strength. Capitalism panders to the least common denominator.

I never got this. Things are so disposable and superficial that everyone looks down on spendthrifts and wastrels, two-thirds of all iPhones ever are still in use, and people who maintain old cars are respected rather than derided as senile codgers.

meanwhile in africa

[Forsher]

I have to disagree with you there as for four or five years the U.S alone had the practical capability to end the world should it have seen fit to. Not many countries can arguably hold that kind of record for long, and while we certainly didn't it still is impressive. As for North Korea, their military doesn't really hold a portion of the earth under its gaze of military overseer.

Regardless of its impressiveness, old data is not useful for a concept that is time-defined. In the 1950s being developed meant having an industrial economy (or being part of a global industrial economy). In the 2010s being developed means having a post-industrial economy dominated by services. It is a massive change.

Even if you want to define developed country simply in the sense of "materially better off" (possibly on a per capita basis), the time defined character of the concept is still present.

You just can't use old data. It says nothing now.

In the last ten years, there have been two "school shootings" (spree shootings with a firearm) in Finland, at Jokela in 2007, and at Kauhajoki in 2008. In the last ten years there have been six in the United States, at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Sandy Hook, Umpqa Community College, Oikos University, and Marysville. (We'll even count Santa Monica, which was a mass shooting that ended up at a college even though it doesn't fit the criteria, to make it seven, just to benefit your side even more.)

I am not convinced it is sensible to look only at spree shootings if the subject is school shootings. Some of them never even manage to kill anyone. It is not a normative definitional burden... the Wikipedia article on school shooting uses both the implicit and spree definitions.

Nor is it clear why you decided to use ten years as your point of reference. In most countries this amounts to three election cycles (not necessarily all completed) and it means dealing with at least two different generations of teenagers. If you wanted to build a model of school shootings and all we knew was that there were 2 in 10 and 6 in 10 we might think that the number of school shootings can be modelled with a Poisson process (with lambda as 0.2 and 0.6 respectively). Then this means that the probability of at least one more school shooting in Finland within the next year (i.e. until 13.10.18) is about 0.18 and the USA about 0.45, which is more than twice as likely.

If we extend this thinking a bit... Wikipedia says there are four massacres by gun in Finland since (and including) 2007 (including the two you mentioned) so we'd put the mass shooting lambda at 0.4, whereas in the USA assuming that all the shootings listed here are really mass it's 91, so we're thinking 9.1. Which would lead to probabilities of at least one more mass shooting this year (i.e. in the remaining 5/24) to be 0.08 and 0.85 respectively. One of these is quite unlikely, whilst the other is really rather likely.

To be honest, we have more information than this by I don't know how to incorporate it, and I'm not sure how reasonable the model is either (I based it off a model of volcano eruptions). But the point I am making is that the numbers themselves actually tell us something* and by fixating on the per capita figures you can fail to see/obscure why mass shootings are brought to mind when we talk about the US but not Finland.

*I rather assume a better model isn't going to suggest that Finland is more likely to have a mass shooting in the next 2.5 months than the US.

The USA is a massive country with a diverse system of governance, so I think it is difficult to summarise the situation as it may vary greatly from state to state, and between federal policy and state policy.

I would argue consistency of quotidian experience is a feature of developed society and that the US is not actually as inconsistent as you imply here.

I could go so far as to say that the U.S. is obviously economically developed, but culturally underdeveloped. It has a disposable, superficial culture because of it's economic strength. Capitalism panders to the least common denominator.

I never got this. Things are so disposable and superficial that everyone looks down on spendthrifts and wastrels, two-thirds of all iPhones ever are still in use, and people who maintain old cars are respected rather than derided as senile codgers.

meanwhile in africa

People who maintain old cars are being praised for a particular kind of superficial culture... just not a disposable one. Have you ever read Good Omens? One of the characters, as I recall it, keeps an older vehicle in good working order... out of respect for its utility as a vehicle not because of any particular kind of attachment to it. Another character does keep a car for sentimental reasons. There is possibly an allegory in there.

Spendthrifts are derided more for purchasing things that people don't value in a way that is not valued. If you spend buckets of money in the right way you're generous. If you buy the right things you're also valued, but other people see these right things as the wrong things and deride you... and often they're pushing back against the other ideas.

[Sycar]

I don't know about Chicago, but California has never implemented a total gun ban. Don't pull shit out of your ass.

I believe the words he is looking for is making any guns besides pistols so hard to get they might as well be banned. Although pistols are also extremely difficult to latch on to. And yet they still have one of the more higher homicide rates out of every state.

Most of gun violence and deaths are actually caused by pistols, considering more automatic weapons are harder to purchase, and more expensive overall to upkeep.

When you said "automatic weapons," did you mean semi-automatic? Citizens in the United States cannot own fully-automatic weapons unless they have a special license and a crap ton of money. All sporting rifles readily available for purchase in the United States are semi-automatic, which means that one bullet is fired every time you pull the trigger. Select-fire and fully-automatic weapons are basically impossible for civilians to own, and no mass shootings have been committed with them.

[Communist Xomaniax]

Overall? Yeah. But a lot of rural America isn't and it's laughable to call some of the rust belt's decayed urban centers "developed". Appalachia as a whole is probably not what we would associate with a developed state.

[USS Monitor]

Is this thread over a year old? Yep.