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A comment on WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge. Parent comment

Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by umanwizard on Monday May 02, 2016 @04:16PM (#11615173)
Total GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not.

HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GDP. Brazil's HDI is 0.755, just below Mexico (0.756)[1]. That's good by global standards, but still "poor" by U.S. standards. Its GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, so being kind to Brazil) is $15,615. The U.S.'s is $55,805[2]

[1]: http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by soapdog on Monday May 02, 2016 @04:29PM (#11615285)
I completely agree with you. HDI is a much better index and measurement. This is actually what we use in social programs here.

The GDP comment I made is that this is not a "poor country", it is instead a country full of wealth inequality and self-perpetuating bad distribution of opportunities where poor people are being kept poor due to having no access to infrastructure and opportunities.

It is a very complex situation and all expressions such as "poor-3rd-world" or "seventh gdp economy" are all reductionist and shallow compared to what is really happening.

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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by cplanas on Monday May 02, 2016 @07:00PM (#11616434)
I agree with your comment, particularly with the fact that HDI is a good index for monitoring the "richness" of a country.

However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.

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