The U.S. is always included in lists of “developed nations,” but it’s not obvious to me that we should be. Our inability to manage COVID-19 in any way, for lack of national healthcare or paid sick leave, makes clear that we’re simply not in the same class as those nations.

— Waldo Jaquith (@waldojaquith) March 8, 2020

Agreed. Having been to many countries, the US is not a developed nation. It does not meet any standards that would qualify it as such. Our systems are fragile and absurd and we do not care for our citizens; we are content to let many of them expire from deaths of opioids and despair, if they are not run down by SUVs in the street first.

Our health care system is a literal criminal enterprise, our federal government cannot govern (and no, that did not start with Trump), and the Boomers are perfectly content to let their children die of climate change and its follow-on effects.

The only area on which we meet any development metric is that we are the very best at predatory capitalism.