Is the U.S. Becoming a Third World Nation?

[Nom De Plume]

Is the U.S. slipping into Third World status? While many scoff at the very question, others citing the rise of homelessness, entrenched pockets of abject poverty and the decaying state of infrastructure might nod “yes.”

These are not uniquely Third World problems, they’re symptoms of a status quo that’s fast losing First World capabilities. What characterizes Third World/Failing States isn’t just poverty, crumbling infrastructure and endemic corruption; at a systems level these are the key dynamics in Third World/Failing States:

1. The status quo protects insiders at the expense of everyone else.
2. There is no real accountability; failure has no consequences, bureaucrats are never fired for incompetence, reforms are watered down or neutered by institutional sclerosis.
3. Pay-to-play is the most cost-effective way to influence policy or evade consequences.
4. The status quo is incapable of differentiating between complexity that serves the legitimate purposes of transparency and accountability and complexity that serves no purpose beyond guaranteeing insiders’ paper-shuffling jobs. As a consequence, complexity that adds no value chokes the economy and the government.
5. There are two sets of laws: one for insiders and the super-wealthy, and another harsher set for everyone else.
6. The super-wealthy fear nothing because the system functions to serve their interests.
7. The super-wealthy and state insiders control the media’s narratives and the machinery of governance to serve their interests. Reforms are in name only; the faces of elected officials change but nothing changes structurally.
8. Insiders, well-paid pundits and the technocrats serving the corporate and state elites believe the status quo is just fine because they’re doing fine; they are blind to the soaring inequality, systemic corruption, stupendous waste and the impossibility of real reform.
Does America’s status quo protect insiders at the expense of everyone else? Yes. As for the other seven characteristics: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

And lets’ not forget #9: the vast majority of the economic gains flow to the elite at the very top of the wealth-power pyramid: is this true in the U.S.? Definitively yes. Just look at this chart: this is a chart of an informal kleptocracy which cloaks itself in the faux finery of democracy and a (rigged) “market” economy.
That’s the very definition of a Third World failed state.

Read more at https://www.keiserreport.com/2019/08/is ... UrP66fA.99

[Nom De Plume]

First, kleptocrats or those operating on their behalf create anonymous shell companies to conceal the origins and ownership of the funds. Multiple interlocking networks of anonymous shell companies may be created and nominee directors appointed to further conceal the kleptocrat as the ultimate beneficial owner of the funds.[13] Second, a kleptocrat's funds are transferred into the Western financial system via accounts which are subject to weak or nonexistent anti-money laundering procedures. Third, financial transactions conducted by the kleptocrat in a Western country complete the integration of the funds. Once a kleptocrat has purchased an asset this can then be resold, providing a legally defensible origin of the funds. Research has shown the purchase of luxury real estate to be a particularly favored method.[14][15] Fourth, kleptocrats may use their laundered funds to engage in reputation laundering, hiring public relations firms to present a positive public image and lawyers to suppress journalistic scrutiny of their political connections and origins of their wealth.[16][17]

The United States is international kleptocrats' favoured jurisdiction for laundering money. In a 2011 forensic study of grand corruption cases, the World Bank found the United States was the leading jurisdiction of incorporation for entities involved in money laundering schemes.[18] The Department of Treasury estimates that $300 billion is laundered annually in the United States.[19]
This kleptocratic financial system flourishes in the United States for three reasons. First, the absence of a beneficial ownership registry means that it is the easiest country in the world in which to conceal the ownership of a company. The United States produces more than 2 million corporate entities a year, and 10 times more shell companies than 41 other countries identified as tax havens combined.[18] It currently takes more information to obtain a library card than to form a US company.[20] Second, some of the professions most at risk of being exploited for money laundering by kleptocrats are not required to perform due diligence on prospective customers, including incorporation agents, lawyers, and realtors.[21] A 2012 undercover study found that just 10 of 1,722 U.S. incorporation agents refused to create an anonymous company for a suspicious customer; a 2016 investigation found that just one of 13 prominent New York law firms refused to provide advice for a suspicious customer.[22] Third, such anonymous companies can then freely engage in transactions without having to reveal their beneficial owner.[citation needed]
It should also be noted that the vast majority of foreign transactions take place in US dollars. Trillions of US dollars are traded on the foreign exchange market daily making even large sums of laundered money a mere drop in the bucket.[citation needed]

Currently, there are only around 1,200 money laundering convictions per year in the United States and money launderers face a less than five percent chance of conviction.[21] Raymond Baker estimates that law enforcement fails in 99.9% of cases to detect money laundering by kleptocrats and other financial criminals.[23]
Other Western jurisdictions favoured by kleptocrats include the United Kingdom and its dependencies, especially the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey.[24][25] Jurisdictions in the European Union which are particularly favoured by kleptocrats include Cyprus, the Netherlands, and its dependency the Dutch Antilles.[26][27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy

[Bogan]

Of course the USA is becoming a third world nation NDP. It is filing up with third world people. Detroit once 100% white one of the USA's most prosperous cities. Now 90% black and abandoned. Chicago, 80% black and the USA's highest murder rate. Baltimore not much of an improvement. Central Washington99% black and so violent that the mayor once had to call in the national guard because the Washington police had lost control of the streets. Same in black ghettoes Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating.

An almost unstoppable tide of Hispanics fleeing their dysfunctional societies and immigrating illegally to the USA to create dysfunctional communities there. South Americans once screamed "Yankee go home!" Now they scream "Yankee, we want to live with you, whether you like it or not!"

So many welfare dependent minorities in California now that the democrats will remain in power forever. Their only problem is that the whites who pay the extortionate taxes the Dems impose on them to buy the Hispanic and black votes, are fleeing California at the rate of 1000,000 per year and going to low tax states like Texas who welcome their financial contributions and their brains. Brains are like hearts, NDP, they go to where they are appreciated.

I see from your posts that you seem to have a problem with free market USA. The question you should be asking yourself, is that if the USA is such a kleptocratic ruled craphole, why do so many people want to barge into a country ruled by kleptocrats?

[Wally Raffles]

Their only problem is that the whites who pay the extortionate taxes the Dems impose on them to buy the Hispanic and black votes, are fleeing California at the rate of 1000,000 per year and going to low tax states like Texas who welcome their financial contributions and their brains. Brains are like hearts, NDP, they go to where they are appreciated.

You are right. People are leaving just as people are coming. They are leaving principally because of the cost of housing. It is interesting to see they are going to States bordering Mexico or very close to Mexico.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/why- ... 40baa56756

[Valkie]

That was Obama's plan.

Turn the USA into a weak third world country
Then his filthy pedophile muzzo mates could take over.

[Texan]

Parts of the US are becoming heading toward 3rd world status. These areas have something in common.

https://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/up ... -Fixed.jpg

http://pre15.deviantart.net/7499/th/pre ... aoezzd.png

Images are too large to post directly, but you will see the similarities.

[Black Orchid]

The same comparison can be seen in the Sydney metro area local government seats. The crime ridden melting pot immigration crammed seats of Sydney are Labor ('liberal').

[Valkie]

Fence off these areas
Throw goats over the wire for the muzzos to have sex with and practice their beheadings.
And any who try to leave get deported.

Problem solved

[Texan]

Fence off these areas
Throw goats over the wire for the muzzos to have sex with and practice their beheadings.
And any who try to leave get deported.

Problem solved

ISIS sex swing
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qLAOtjdXQJ0

[brian ross]

The United States in Decline

Challenges to American democracy are testing the stability of its constitutional system and threatening to undermine political rights and civil liberties worldwide. As part of this year’s report, Freedom House offers a special assessment of the state of democracy in the United States midway through the term of President Donald Trump. While democracy in America remains robust by global standards, it has weakened significantly over the past eight years, and the current president’s ongoing attacks on the rule of law, fact-based journalism, and other principles and norms of democracy threaten further decline.

Having observed similar patterns in other nations where democracy was ultimately overtaken by authoritarianism, Freedom House warns that the resilience of US democratic institutions in the face of such an assault cannot be taken for granted.

Freedom House has tracked a slow overall decline in political rights and civil liberties in the United States for the past eight years, punctuated by an unusual three-point drop for developments in 2017. Prominent concerns have included Russian interference in US elections, domestic attempts to manipulate the electoral system, executive and legislative dysfunction, conflicts of interest and lack of transparency, and pressure on judicial independence and the rule of law.

This year, the United States’ total score on the 100-point scale used by Freedom in the World remains the same as in the report covering 2017, with two indicators changing in opposite directions:

The score for freedom of assembly improved, as there was no repetition of the protest-related violence that had led to a lower score for the previous two years. In fact, there was an upsurge of civic action and demonstrations on issues ranging from women’s rights and immigration policy to the problem of mass shootings in schools.

The score for equal treatment before the law declined due to government policies and actions that improperly restricted the legal rights of asylum seekers, signs of discrimination in the acceptance of refugees for resettlement, and excessively harsh or haphazard immigration enforcement policies that resulted in the separation of children from adult family members, among other problematic outcomes.

The United States currently receives a score of 86 out of 100 points. While this places it below other major democracies such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, it is still firmly in the Free category. Nevertheless, its decline of eight points in as many years is significant. The United States’ closest peers with respect to total Freedom in the World scores are Belize, Croatia, Greece, Latvia, and Mongolia.

[Source]

According to Freedom House, Australia scores higher than the USA - 98 compared to 86.

Recently, in North Carolina, this occurred:



The Republicans in the legislature decided to not hold a voting session in respect for 9/11. So what did they do? IN secret, they arranged to sight and vote down a budget and other members while almost all Democrats were at services for 9/11. Hardly indicative of democracy, now is it? So much so that the Global Electoral Freedom group - the gold standard in measuring the legitimacy of election processes has now deemed North Carolina to be effectively no longer a democracy. Among its many concerns, where it rates its elections as 'fair' as those in places like Sierra Leone and Indonesia, it is also ranked the worlds WORST in terms of gerrymandering. WORST.

Not even Queensland, NSW or South Australia in the bad old days of such antics, was measured that badly.

Is the USA a "Third World country"? Economically, no. Politically, it certain appears headed that way, rather quickly.