Is America Really a Third World Country in a Gucci Belt?

On Marr 22, 2020 @jasminetyon tweeted and birthed, very possibly, a new sentence into the American conversation.

America is a third world country in a Gucci belt.

— Jasmine (@jasminetyon) March 23, 2020

Her account has just over 1,000 followers.

This tweet has 38.4k likes and 151k Retweets.

The tweet was quickly screen-grabbed, getting posted to the subreddit r/blackpeopletwitter by u/zed274 where it climbed to its current upvote count of 63.8k. This is the most upvoted post by user u/zed274 by a wide margin.

These are not internet influencers.

“America is a third world country in a gucci belt” is an idea whose reach has spread beyond that of its creator, and its early adopters.

It is a sentiment that struck a nerve, right as it was clear (late March) that the US was fucking up the Coronavirus response.

For reference, on March 15th there were 676 new cases of Coronavirus reported in America.

Source

On March 22nd, the day of the original tweet, there were 8,631 new cases discovered.

Source

Not total cases, cases discovered that day.

The New Cases Discovered Today is a stat I find hard to wrap my head around, which is a fact that Trump and Corona-deniers thrive on: the numbers we’re hearing about are mathematically confounding, exponential acceleration being reserved for sports cars.

It’s hard to grasp the idea that today:

 77,000 people got a positive test result for the first time in their lives,

and that, tomorrow 

78,00 more, 

(new, different) people 

will receive a positive test result for the first time in their lives. 

And that the next day, 

79,000 more 

new, different, people.

And the next day, 

and the next day,

and the next day.

With no end in sight.

When you’re up against the kind of overwhelming anxiety and uncertainty, it makes sense we might ask ourselves how we got here, who we are.

Old enough to remember when 2,100 people died on 9/11 and the country came to a standstill.

Now 1,400 people die a day and it’s business as usual?

Who are we. https://t.co/2wfQJM1bPH

— Lynese Wallace (@lynesewallace) August 6, 2020

So to understand if America is truly a third world country in a gucci belt, we first have to define our criteria.

What Is A Third World Country?

Wikipedia uses these words in its description of the term “Third World”: 

• Outdated

• Stereotype

• countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War

Since our tweet used this term – and was agreed-with to the extent of hundreds of thousand of engagements, with additional, undocumented millions who have probably seen or heard the sentence since @jasminetyon tweeted it – and my job (which I am not paid for and was not asked to do) is to understand if America really is a Third World country in a gucci belt, I have to find a way to use the term Third World in a way that I can measure, that I can count with numbers.

A compulsion that the essay-list White Supremacy Culture, from From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001 describes as “quantity over quality” or, to paraphrase liberally, “part of its list of things that are problems with organizations created in a society built on white supremacy”.

To combat the problematic parts of my approach, to the daunting, very likely misguided task of measuring the Third Worldness of America in 2020, I will need to incorporate some measurements not strictly listed in the 6 Developed Country Bullet Points I am using to start with; 6 bullet points that however flawed, shrink the scope of this exercise into the realm of the possible.

The 6 Usual Suspects of Developed Countries, parsing Investopedia liberally:

• capita gross domestic product

• level of industrialization

• general standard of living

• human development index (HDI)

• level of economic growth

• the amount of technological infrastructure

I must put more weight on the humanitarian aspects of these, and other insights, knowing that the term Developed was developed by those that benefit from being called Developed, just as history is inherently biased towards those who write it.

By measuring more than just how much money we have, or business dynamism (the only category besides Technology in which the US is #1, based on the 2019 WEF World Competitiveness index), we can attempt to get near the true quality of life a country provides its citizens, and then consider how Developed that quality of life looks.

And since subjective, racist ideas of what determines a country’s Third World status are not useful in determining how well countries are doing at being countries, relative to other countries, I am going to rely on the first term that came to my mind when I tried to think of a criteria for classifying something as Third World: not good.

If I live in one of the “best” countries in the world, I should at least be able to say that a lot of the aspects of living in my “best” country are at least “good”, if not “great”, and definitely not, “not good”, or, “bad”.

How Is Development Measured, What Does It Mean, and How Are We Doing At It…in about 300 words

Per Capita GDP and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP)

monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period.^[B

You know it’s Wikipedia

America is 13th.

GDP per capita does not, however, reflect differences in the cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries; therefore using a basis of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) is arguably more useful when comparing living standards between nations

Still Wikipedia

America is 10th in GDP PPP.

Levels of Indsutrialization

Levels of industrialization are measured by the amount of development in the tertiary (services and end products) and quaternary sectors (IT, media, r&d) of a countries economy.

80% of America’s economy is Service Sector (which resides in the tertiary and quaternary sectors).

The most Service Sector oriented economies are perhaps the least well known: #1 Gibraltar and #2 Jersey

Most of the list above us: small countries, heavily reliant on tourism.

We are certainly post-industrial, but as the Coronoavirus has shown us, if you are 4/5ths providing-services-to-others, you better have safety nets if anything impacts people’s ability to provide services.

Standard of Living

Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as inflation adjusted income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality, and educational standards are also used

Wiki-ofcourse-apedia

America is 13th. That’s before we even look at other humanitarian factors not traditionally considered in the measurements of global development.

Human Development Index

quantifies a country’s levels of education, literacy, and health into a single figure, can also be used to evaluate an economy or the degree of development.

Not Wikipedia for once

Even the Human Development Index – used to, one would hope – measure the Humanity of a country:

does not specifically reflect quality-of-life factors, such as empowerment movements or overall feelings of security. In recognition of these facts, the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) provides additional composite indices to evaluate other life aspects, including inequality issues such as gender disparity or racial inequality. 

But still a pedia

America is 15th by the way.

Level of Economic Growth

We have the largest total GDP by trillions over 2nd placed China.

Source

But in 2019, we were 101st in Real GDP Growth Rate which is, as we all know without researching, is the,

measure of the value of economic output adjusted for price changes 

Back to Wikipedia

Which of course can neeeever be mistaken for real GDP per capita growth

 which is the growth rate of average income per person.

Just a few sentences later

In which America is 54th between 2010-2018.

Technological Infrastructure

The United States was 1st in Technology as ranked by the IMD World Competitiveness Rankings in 2019.

Of the subfactors that make up that score we are 1st in Capital, 11th in technological framework and 19th in regulatory framework.

So we have a lot of money with little rules.

Some Other Measurements

Infant Mortality: We are 55th according to the CIA Factbook, which is, exactly what is sounds like: a book of information gathered by the CIA about every country.

America is – there’s that number again – 13th in Infrastructure: the thing we all rely on to keep us getting from one place to another.

We are in the 30s for Economic Fragility.

The Global Comepeititve Index lists us as 55th in Health, but we do well in the areas of “Markets” and “Innovation Ecosystem”.

The only thing America is truly #1 at on this cool colored chart is, as mentioned earlier, Business Dynamism.

Cool.

All the flags that read: Don’t tread on me my business dynamism, make so much more sense now.

What Gucci Belt Means

Of course, @jasminetyon wasn’t being literal.

America, at 2,800 miles is far too wide to wear a Gucci belt.

Her tweet is alluding to the financial phenomenon of buying something expensive you can’t really afford, specifically, a material item, specifically, a material item that is a cultural symbol agreed upon to bestow socio-economic status on its owner.

As a young Kanye once said, “I went to Jacob (The Jeweller) with 25 thou/ before I had a house and I’d do it again”. I wonder what he’s up to these days.

When most people think of Gucci belt, they think of the Double-G belts which start at $450.

Here’s an enormous picture of one.

But the phrase “in a gucci belt” can’t just be read as pure metaphor for buying something expensive you can’t afford, to show the world how much you can afford to spend. It is also referring to the popularity of gucci belts in hip hop culture.

As Father put in his chorus to “Mirror, Mirror”

“I started tucking in my shirt just to show off my Gucci belt”

Or as Future, boasts on “Same Damn Time”:

Gucci made in Italy Bally belt I’m killing shit

The way I’m rocking Jimmy Choo tha word got out I’m dealing it

XXL MAG even has a Top 10 list of songs with Gucci in their title which was made either before, or as shade towards, “Gucci Gang” by Lil Pump with it’s 1 Billion+ views on youtube. With Kreayshawn at #1, who can say what the goals of your Top 10 Gucci Songs list were.

As interviewed by Business Insider, NYU Fashion Studies Professor Julia DiNardo had these notes on Gucci’s popularity with the young folk.

Alessandro Michele (Gucci Creative Director as of 2015) is creating pop-culture references at a time in which people are really searching for a little bit of nostalgia with something new

“A little bit of nostalgia with something new” sounds exactly like Trump’s recycle of Reagan’s “Make America Great Again”: all the hoo-rah of feeling good about being American, with none of the feeling bad about your racism.

It also sounds like all fashion cycles which bring back styles from previous eras (currently, the 90s) with updated interpretations.

The narrator of the BI.com video gives us another reason Millenials love Gucci.

Millennials and teens also love Gucci because so many of them grew up seeing Gucci on celebrities or in magazines.

We also grew up watching economic security on our celebrities, which is why we love that, but we can’t afford it so we have to buy a Gucci belt.

So…Are We a Third World Country In a Gucci Belt?

It is reasonable for me to expect, as a citizen of an economically advantaged country – at least on paper – that the healthcare outcomes in my country, compared to others, could be described as “good”, and not, “not good”.

How does the quality of the U.S. health system compare to other countries?

a review of the available data prior to the onset of the pandemic suggests that in most of these measures, the U.S. continued to lag behind comparably wealthy and sizable countries. As rates of all-cause mortality, maternal mortality, and years of life lost have stagnated or increased over time, the gap has widened between the US health system and those of its peers.

DJ Wiki Wiki Wiki

It is reasonable to expect – as a First World citizen – that the corruption perception index of my country should be higher than a D+.

America’s corruption perception rank is 69/100 which puts us in 23rd.

Wikipedia

Much of these stats align with what I already thought about America: a C student who should be getting an A on the global report cards (as seriously as they can be taken).

I knew we weren’t the best in every category.

I thought for sure what we excelled at was Law and Order.

If anything we have too much of it.

We have like, illegal, chaotic levels of law and order that kill black and brown people.

As liberal as I vote, as brainwashed as a Fox viewer would call me, an MSNBC watcher, as progressive as I think I am, I still associated Law and Order with “lots of police” and words like “enforcing”, “crowd control”, “curfew”, “arrest”, “jail”, “prison”.

These are not processes and outcomes I agree with, but I still thought they were the criteria to define Law and Order.

When I saw the violence police committed against peaceful Americans during 2020, I still thought: that’s law and order. That’s the terrible, terrible, terrible law and order I’ve come to know and expect.

Maybe that’s why the results of the Global Peace, and Law and Order, indices shocked me.

America is 128th on the Global Peace Index.

The index’s values can be argued (high levels of refugees in a country are viewed as disruptive and lowering of a countries Peace Index, which is at best a corollary relationship) but when I got to the following criteria, my white American male started showing:

• Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people
• Number of jailed persons per 100,000 people
• Number of armed-services personnel per 100,000

These are criteria that, if your country scores high on, mean you are bad at Peace.

Bad, as in, not good.

Thinking of things like Police and Prison as Law and Order, and subconsciously associatings high amounts of police with high levels of peace, I was in the position of thinking I must, in some way, be against high levels of Law and Order, which is just thinking of Law and Order the way the right wing has taught Americans to think about for decades, if not our entire existance: without being “tough on crime” we will have no peace, no law and order.

To developed the belief that I was somehow personally against Law and Order means I had been thinking about Law and Order in an all or nothing framework: it’s either Dick Wolf or I don’t know what it is!

As liberal as I may be, I have blindsides, and I still have conditioning I need to work through.

The Law and Order Index, gathered by Gallup, shows America as 44th in the world, though, troublingly, United Arab Emirates is ranked 3rd, and China is 9th.

Granted, this is a survey about how citizens feel about the safety of their country, asking global participants whether,

they feel safe walking
alone at night where they live (69%) and
have confidence in their local police (68%).
One in eight (13%) said they had property
stolen from them or another household
member in the past year, and 6% said they
were assaulted or mugged.

2019 Global Law & Order Report 2019, Gallup

Whether China and the UAE are doctoring their outcomes either directly or by intimidation is beyond my paygrade, but it’s certainly a job for the representatives at Of Course They Are and Schmidt.

Some outliers aside, American citizens still feel like we’re in the 44th safest country in the world.

I just can’t make congruous the fact that I live in a country that could afford to be the most developed country in all aspects, but fails, almost completely, to do so.

The only possible conclusion is that Americans are not being paid – be it via income, or in social services – in proportion to the amount of wealth we create.

It is reasonable to expect, in the richest country in the world, by far (our economy has a larger share of the global economy than the combined shares of the 6th through 20th largest economies, 7 trillion dollars larger than the 2nd place Chinese), that I should feel secure in my economy. But America doesn’t crack the top 10 in perceptions of economic security.

Doesn’t having the world’s largest economy that mean we should be #1 in most factors that relate to our citizens well-being? Or at least Top 5, right? Top 10?

Most of these statistics and global rankings, however reliable or unreliable, don’t place us in the company of undeveloped nations.

But, just as you’d react to the news that your friend who owes you money is buying a Gucci belt: we should probably be doing a lot better before we buy the thing we just bought.

In America’s case, that thing we just bought is probably the 54% of discretionary spending we allocate to our military.

Every year the government spends 2/3rds of its budget on Mandatory Spending leaving our leaders to decide how 1/3rd of the budget is spent. In 2015, as is not uncommon, they decided to spend more than half of that money on the military.

We can look at rankings and argue about relative quality of life all day long – a day in which, probably, over 1,000 Americans will have died from a preventable disease – and that’s a good conversation to have.

But all those conversations should ultimately come to the same conclusion that catsntstuff97 comes to in the original thread for the r/blackpeopletwitter’s post of the @jasminetyon tweet: