Detroit .. third world country?

[touchring]

Re: Detroit .. third world country?

Oh sweet heavens. That meal looks so freaking good. I'm salivating like a slobbering mutt just looking at that spread.

I eat like this almost every meal when i'm in China and it costs maybe 4 bucks a person in a small family restaurant. that's for the city, i ever paid 5 bucks for a seafood meal with crab and fish in a small town. it's insane.

What's poverty? The city dwelling middle-class in China have better lives than their peers in developed nations.

[t12357]

Re: Detroit .. third world country?

That's funny - 19th century America was far more socially mobile and the welfare state didn't exist. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt were all self-made men who started with nothing. Carnegie actually came to the US with an impoverished large Scottish family that lived in a single room. At age 13 he worked 16 hours a day, six days a week for $1.25 a week back in the 1840s. When he had amassed his fortune, he was worth $500 million. Carnegie got no welfare state benefits and free nothing.

That's funny, I think these self-made man did not have to pay "income taxes," maybe that and hard work can take a lot further that the current PoS system.

Who knows, maybe they even had "real money" as compared to the PoS there is today.

Maybe inflation was very low or non-existent and that $1.25 could go a long way, instead of the today $80K mentioned in another post.

Just wondering.

[Wild Style]

Re: Detroit .. third world country?

To say that Detroit is "3rd world" is to insult the 3rd world. I grew up and lived in a 3rd world country (India). It was nowhere near as dangerous as Detroit. There are more murders in a year in Detroit than there have been in two decades in my home town in India (my town has twice as many people as Detroit) - which is remarkably civilized even by Western standards.

Before I came to the West, I associated poverty with not having a roof over one's head (or an inadequate one) and not getting enough to eat. It was only after I came to the West that I realised being poor meant having a TV, a home, a car and eating so much that one became obese.

On a more humorous note, here's the incomparable Jeremy Clarkson on Detroit (this was shot in the early 90s I believe).

If you ever find yourself in NYC one day send me a private message on here before you go and I will meet you there. I will clear that misconception up for you real quick. My family is from west africa so I know poverty as you do. With that said there are people living in parts of the city who are living like animals with no electric, no food, rats that feed on house pets and they barely have enough food to sustain themselves. I have seen this with my own eyes.

[santafe2]

Re: Detroit .. third world country?

That's funny, I think these self-made man did not have to pay "income taxes," maybe that and hard work can take a lot further that the current PoS system.

Check, 1913.

Who knows, maybe they even had "real money" as compared to the PoS there is today.

Check, gold backed.

Maybe inflation was very low or non-existent and that $1.25 could go a long way, instead of the today $80K mentioned in another post.

Check, inflation started after 1913.

[t12357]

Re: Detroit .. third world country?

Check, 1913.

Check, gold backed.

Check, inflation started after 1913.

Thank you, I do not think to check it out, I have already done so, I was just throwing these kind of "retorical" questions as food for thought for everyone in the forum.

Cheers!