Actually, we already have a third world political class, so we're more than half way there!
What are the things that make a country a third world country?
I'd agree with this, but I'd also point out that in addition to inequality there is also a total lack of social mobility in third world countries. In the U.S.A. we haven't entirely lost that yet. It's when people feel trapped in the lower classes that the rot really starts. People in the U.S.A. still aspire to make it, but that is starting to change. Young people, for example, are finding out that education doesn't do them much good. This is a dangerous development.
https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/usa-a-third-world-county-in-the-making-14064ea5c534
I browsed over the article, and I was surprised to find a picture of a closed down, boarded up Lena's grocery store in Milwaukee in the article. :lol:
The photo is true of that store. It stands boarded up now. I'm from Milwaukee and the North Side but not that particular neighborhood but I am very familiar with that area.
But I'm looking for the words to articulate this....
Okay, let me first start off by saying I found the article extremely over-simplistic. Not that we need to make things complicated because we don't. But there are times you can probably oversimplify a thing.
The case of the City of Milwaukee and Lena's grocery store is exactly that. But why?
Because Lena's is or was (I think they may still retain 1 store in Milwaukee but I'm not sure)
a Black-American owned grocery store which is rare socio-economic phenomenon in the USA. And by grocery store I am not talking about what we term "corner stores" in Milwaukee, usually run by Arabs in the Black-American neighborhoods. Almost all grocery stores in the USA are owned by white American just as with banks, large manufacturing companies, industries that make earth moving machinery, major general contracting companies etc.
This has importance due to its relation to numbers of employees they can hire and scales of economy. Issues of power and real wealth.
Milwaukee actually had a Black-American owned bank in that same neighborhood as that Lena's photo. Right down the block actually. It was opened by a few local Black-American women in the city with experience in banking. But through over extending the bank's balance sheet in loans to the poor blacks in that area before and during the Housing Collapse period resulting from Wall Street (and other factors), the bank was forced to close. Fortunately, a Black-American owned bank from Chicago stepped in and established their Chicago bank in that exact location and building.
Black-America already hit the point white America is talking about the country "heading in." It hit that point decades ago. But Lena's is a more complicated story of success and failure. Particularly in the Black-American story. But Milwaukee and black Milwaukee are far and away a larger success, adaptive story (transition from industrial to service economy) than Detroit. The Milwaukee-Racine region still has a large industrial manufacturing sector relative to most nations on earth. Even in the USA it ranks in the top 10 or so if not in 2nd or 1st place. If memory serves me correct.
But back to Detroit. The largest black city in the USA. Several years ago that city had
zero grocery stores in the city proper. Zero. The population bought groceries at corner stores. It had fewer snow trucks than Milwaukee (even with a larger population and larger geography). About the same number of public schools. And about the same number of police. And now whole areas of the city have been demolitioned and turned into mini-farmland.
Milwaukee city proper is stark contrast to Detroit proper in terms of grocery stores. There are
many different (companies) grocery stores in Milwaukee. And we have two with bars in them selling beer on tap and wine. One of them with underground parking and the other with a 3 or 4 level parking complex and the grocery store has two floors with elevators, modern chandelier over the wide stair case, faux fire place by the bar with piano. This latter one is admittedly not officially the city proper but its suburb, but you cross the street literally and you are in Milwaukee city proper.
There is more I can say on this but that is just the grocery store issue.
The grocery store where you cross the street you are in Milwaukee, cross the street the opposite way you are in its well-to-do suburb of Shorewood.
The one that is in Milwaukee city proper, on the Lower East Side as well.
