如果你无法迁移，你会选择作为中产阶级生活在第三世界国家，还是生活在美国？

T erence Kenneth John Nunis
It is always better to be wealthy, no matter where you are. As long as you have wealth, you have options and opportunities. Poverty robs people of that. One assumption in this question is that being in the US is somehow desirable. That may have been true in the 1950s, and 1960s, when the US lead the world in standard of living. Those times have long passed. In terms of crime ,medical care, education, infrastructure development, and every other major indicator outside weapons development, the US is like a developing nation, not a developed one.

无论你在哪里，富有总是更好的。 只要你有财富，你就有选择和机会。 贫穷剥夺了人们的权利。关于这个问题的一个假设是，在美国的话，生活在某种程度上是可取的。这可能在20世纪50年代和60年代都是真的，当时美国的生活水平一直领先于世界。那些时代已经过去很久了。在犯罪、医疗保健、教育等方面以及在基础设施发展和武器发展以外的每一个主要指标上，美国就像一个发展中国家，而不是一个发达国家。

Secondly, the Third World refers to nations that did not officially side with the US and her allies, the First World; and the Soviet unx and her allies, the Second World. This term is a legacy from the Cold War era. Nowadays, many people mistakenly use the term to refer to developing countries, which is itself, a somewhat nebulous term. There are “Third World” nations such as Singapore which have a standard of living that far outstrips the US. There are “Third World” nations such as the UAE, Qatar and Oman that are wealthier than the US per capital GDP.
Even were we to consider the latter meaning of Third World, as a synonym to “developing countries”, to be poor in America is hardly better than being poor in the “Third World”, in places like Rwanda, China or Malaysia, where there are better opportunities for socioeconomic advancement, where gun violence is not at theater level and where medical care is actually reasonably affordable.
 

第二，第三世界是指那些没有正式站在美国及其盟国第一世界一边的国家；苏联及其盟国第二世界一边的国家。这个词是冷战时期遗留下来的。现如今，许多人错误地用这个词来指发展中国家，这本身就是一个有点模糊的术语。新加坡等“第三世界”国家的生活水平要远远超过美国。 阿联酋、卡塔尔和阿曼等“第三世界”国家的人均GDP都比美国富裕。
即使我们把第三世界的后一种含义看作是“发展中国家”的一个同义词，在美国贫穷也比不上在卢旺达等地的“第三世界”贫穷，中国或者马来西亚，那里有更好的社会经济发展机会，枪支暴力也不在战区水平，而且医疗费用也是合理且负担得起的。
 
Allen Lobo, Corporate finance, former physician & research physicist
Poor in America.
Or in any liberal developed nation for that matter, whether in the West or outside of it.
Before I proceed with explaining why, please allow me to be as clear as I possibly can that I take this question as the choice being put specifically to me (i.e. “Would you rather X or Y…” as opposed to “Is it better in general to be X or Y”).
I cannot speak for all persons, merely for myself.
This matters because each person is born under a unique set of circumstances and hence their prospects and choices, would understandably be different.
 
选择在美国贫穷的状态。
或者在任何自由主义的发达国家中，无论是在西方还是别的地方。
在我开始解释原因之前，请允许我尽可能清楚地说明一下，我把这个问题看作是特别向我提出的选择（即“你更愿意是X还是Y…”，而不是“一般来说是X还是Y更好”）。
我不代表所有的人，只代表我自己。
这是很重要的，因为每个人都是在独特的环境下出生的，因此他们的前景和选择会有所不同，这是可以理解的。
 
Three broad categories in which we all vary - natural talent, lottery of birth (i.e. family, class level, nation) and blind luck. Now since luck by its very nature is an intangible, it cannot be factored in (either favorably or adversely). So I’ll focus on the other two.
I was born with an exceptional amount of the first and a mixed quantity of the second (as for luck, I’d reckon that chance has been kinder to me than for most others).
I grew up in a lower-middle class household in India, but had a very loving and supportive family (and still do). Lower middle-class in India when I grew up in the 80s and 90s would hands down be considered to be decidedly worse than even poor in America in material terms.
To give you some sense of it, I was raised in a tiny apartment, one 300 square foot room for four people. We had space for only one bed for two, no gadgets like vacuum cleaners, washing machines or microwaves, no heating or cooling, no vacations out of town, no more than two toys and two sets of new clothes a year, we ate meat just once a week. That was pretty much all of my childhood until the age of 14.
 
我们都有不同的三大类——天赋、出生(即家庭、阶级、国家)和运气。既然运气本质上是一种无形的东西，它就不能被考虑进去(无论是好的还是坏的)。所以我重点讲一下另外两个。
我从出生以来，就有大量的第一个，第二个是混合的（至于运气，我想这个机会对我来说比其他大多数人都要好）。
我在印度的一个中产阶级的家庭里长大，有一个非常有爱心和支持我的家庭（现在仍然如此）。我在80年代和90年代长大时，印度的中下阶层在物质上要比美国的穷人差得多。
给你一点感觉，我是在一个小公寓里长大的，一个300平方英尺的房间，可以住四个人。我们只有一张双人床的空间，没有吸尘器、洗衣机或微波炉之类的小玩意，没有暖气或制冷，不能外出度假，一年里面不超过两个玩具和两套新衣服，我们每周只吃一次肉。 那几乎是我14岁之前的童年。
 
But I consider it to have been an immensely happy period of my life.
It isn’t some romanticizing, there were solid reasons why I was fortunate despite all of the above.
I had no dearth of love or attention from my parents (and a solid amount of disciplining as well), a little sister who plainly adored me, plenty of friends, I did very well in school .
Relative poverty matters.
Some might consider this arrogant, but if I could rise from poor in a poor nation to upper middle class in the richest nation on earth, I’ll bet fair money that I would have had an easier time doing the same starting out in a rich nation from that same station in terms of wealth.
Let me put it in another way. The West (Americans specifically) paid for my education and even living expenses in full and I wasn’t even a citizen from their nation. You actually then think I would have been accorded any worse if I had actually been born here?
 
我认为这是我一生中非常幸福的一段时期。
这并不是什么浪漫的事，尽管有上述种种，我还是有充分的理由来感到幸运的。
我并不缺乏父母的爱和关注（还有严格的要求），一个很崇拜我的小妹妹，有很多朋友，我在学校表现很好。
相对贫穷很重要。
有些人可能会认为这种说法是很傲慢的，但如果我能从一个贫穷国家的穷人上升到地球上最富裕国家的中上阶层，我敢打赌，从财富的角度来看，我在一个富裕国家做同样的事情会更容易。
我换个说法吧。西方(特别是美国人)全额支付了我的教育费甚至生活费，而我甚至不是他们国家的公民。你真的认为如果我真的出生在这里，我会得到更差的待遇吗？
 
Give a man three things - talent, ambition and a loving family.
You can then put him in most places of the planet as you please, I swear he’ll find a way to make a fist of it. And if he cannot do it in that place, he will find a way somehow to get to another place where he can exploit his abilities.
This isn’t just the case with me but also played out in similar fashion with the two men I love the most - my closest friend and my father. The first who is now a lieutenant colonel grew straight-up in the slums of Mumbai, not in even a shoebox like I did (because at least I lived in one made of brick unlike him).

无论你在哪里，富有总是更好的。 只要你有财富，你就有选择和机会。 贫穷剥夺了人们的权利。关于这个问题的一个假设是，在美国的话，生活在某种程度上是可取的。这可能在20世纪50年代和60年代都是真的，当时美国的生活水平一直领先于世界。那些时代已经过去很久了。在犯罪、医疗保健、教育等方面以及在基础设施发展和武器发展以外的每一个主要指标上，美国就像一个发展中国家，而不是一个发达国家。

As for the second, my father grew up in far greater privation. Raised in a remote village in the 50s and 60s in conditions which would make people in the West think that I was plainly making shit up if I were to describe those conditions which are but one generation away among my ancestors.
As bare bones as my childhood might seem to Westerners, I had far more in material terms than Dad who grew up with no electricity, no plumbing, no running water, no electronics (except for a radio), no doctors. Not little or scarce quantities of those, I mean nothing of any of those. Which even the poor in the West could take for granted even in those times.
 
至于我父亲是在更加贫困的环境中长大的。他在50年代和60年代的一个偏远的村庄长大，那里的条件会让西方人认为，如果我要描述那些离我的祖先只有一代之遥的条件，那我显然是在胡说八道。
在西方人看来，我的童年可能是算最基本的，但就物质而言，我就比父亲拥有的要多得多，父亲在成长过程中没有电，没有管道，没有自来水，没有电子设备(除了收音机)，没有医生。不是很少或很少的数量，我指的是任何一个都缺乏。即使在那个时代，西方的穷人也认为这是理所当然的。
 
He too cherishes his childhood, but he made a fist of it. My little sister and I have then built up on that foundation which that man laid down with such mettle.
Just so you know I’m hardly some kind of exception in that regard!
But then what about the other option - being rich in a poor nation?
There most certainly are some serious advantages to be had from the “rich person” part of that equation. But also some significant disadvantages to be had from the “poor nation” part of it.
The key thing to understand here is that the advantages are not of much consequence to me, but the disadvantages matter a lot to me.

无论你在哪里，富有总是更好的。 只要你有财富，你就有选择和机会。 贫穷剥夺了人们的权利。关于这个问题的一个假设是，在美国的话，生活在某种程度上是可取的。这可能在20世纪50年代和60年代都是真的，当时美国的生活水平一直领先于世界。那些时代已经过去很久了。在犯罪、医疗保健、教育等方面以及在基础设施发展和武器发展以外的每一个主要指标上，美国就像一个发展中国家，而不是一个发达国家。

The advantages largely boil down to two things (as other answers mention here very correctly) -
1. Access to cheap human labor.
2. Ability to flout the law.
As for the cheap labor part, the utility would be marginal for me. I’ve been living on my own and taking care of myself since I was sixteen. I’m used to it by now. Sure it would be nice to be able to hire someone but the fact is that modern gadgets make those things easy in my eyes at any rate.
As for abusing the law, I don’t care for that either. I see no need for it and I don’t like living in places like that because that is always a double-edged sword.
 
优势主要归结为以下两点（其他答案在这里非常准确地提到了）
1.获得廉价的人类劳动力。
2.滥用法律的能力。
至于廉价劳动力的部分，作用对我来说是微乎其微的。我从16岁起就一直独自生活，自己照顾自己。我已经习惯了。当然，能雇一个人会很好，但事实是，但事实是，现代的小玩意儿让这些东西在我眼里无论如何都很容易。至于滥用法律，我也不在乎。我认为没有必要去这样做，我也不喜欢住在这样的地方，因为那总是一把双刃剑。
我眼里无论如何都很容易。
 
Which brings me to the disadvantages.
No matter how rich you may be in a poor nation, you still have to deal with such things as pollution, lack of infrastructure and corrupt officials. When I visit Mumbai (the place of my birth) every couple of years or so, I see expensive cars still having to drive through narrow streets in thick traffic through thickly polluted air. You can’t just escape all of that. You still need to bribe officials not to get special treatment but even to have them do their regular job (though things are better now than they once were at least in some offices).
No amount of wealth is going to insulate you from all of those things.
Not unless you wall yourself off in some kind of tiny gated community and who the hell wants to live like that? I certainly don’t. I like people, I like being around them, I would hate living in such a proverbial cage of gold, limited in interaction with just a tiny sliver of the population at large.
But the more pernicious part is that while as a rich person you can abuse the law, there are always those above you who can abuse you.
If I am a well-to-do businessman, I could beat my house servant and pay the police. And in the same way the local politician can also have me beaten or rape my wife and pay the police.
 
这让我想到了缺点。
在一个贫穷的国家里，不管你是多么富有，你仍然要面对诸如污染、缺乏基础设施和面对腐败官员等问题。当我每隔几年左右到访孟买（我出生的地方）时，我看到昂贵的汽车仍然不得不在拥挤的交通中穿过那狭窄的街道，穿过污染严重的空气。你不能逃避这一切。你仍然需要贿赂官员，不是为了得到特殊的待遇，而是为了让他们做他们的日常工作（尽管现在的情况比以前好了，至少在一些办公室是这样的）。
再多的财富也不会让你远离这些东西。
除非你把你自己关在一个小小的封闭社区里，可谁会愿意这样生活呢？我当然不喜欢。我喜欢和人联系，我喜欢和他们在一起，我讨厌生活在这样一个众所周知的黄金笼子里，与一小部分人的交往都受到限制。
但更不好的部分是，虽然作为一个富人，你可以拥有滥用法律的权利，但总是有那些比你更高段位的人可以欺负你。
如果我是一个富裕的商人，我可以打我的佣人并报警。同样地，当地的政客也可以殴打我或者强奸我的妻子，然后去报警。
 
If a man who is significantly more powerful than you wants something you have, he will take it. The police and courts will not only be of no recourse, but the former might even aid him.
In the jungle, every predator is also prey to another above it in the food chain.
The frog swallows up the fly, the serpent eats the frog, the mongoose tears up the serpent, the wolf devours the mongoose and the tiger then kills the wolf.
Pick your station then as both predator and prey.
You think that corruption will only work for you and never against you?

无论你在哪里，富有总是更好的。 只要你有财富，你就有选择和机会。 贫穷剥夺了人们的权利。关于这个问题的一个假设是，在美国的话，生活在某种程度上是可取的。这可能在20世纪50年代和60年代都是真的，当时美国的生活水平一直领先于世界。那些时代已经过去很久了。在犯罪、医疗保健、教育等方面以及在基础设施发展和武器发展以外的每一个主要指标上，美国就像一个发展中国家，而不是一个发达国家。

Even if you’re not corrupt, you will always need to be watchful unless you’re something like a big politician or super-rich businessman.
In places like Mumbai even if you are rich you’re targeted by the local Mafia.
And unlike the U.S. where the Mafia doesn’t mess with you as a private businessman unless you first go to them, that is not the case there. Here’s the best part - even with such unsavory matters as extortion, the Mafia model in say New York City is “Pay us and we’ll guarantee you won’t be harmed by us or anyone else.” They have their turfs divided clearly. In Mumbai the model is “Pay us and the only thing we guarantee is that we won’t harm you. But you’re still fair game for any other gangs!”
 
即使你没有腐败，你也需要时刻保持警惕，除非你是一个像大政客或者超级富豪这样的商人。
在像孟买这样的地方，即使你很富有，你也会成为当地黑手党的目标。
与美国不同的是，黑手党不会把你当成一个私有的商人，除非你主动去找他们，但事实并非如此。最棒的是——即使有勒索这样令人讨厌的事情，纽约市的黑手党模式是“付钱给我们，我们保证你不会受到我们或任何其他人的伤害。”他们的区域划分得很清楚。在孟买，这种模式是“付钱给我们，我们唯一能保证的是我们不会伤害你。但你对其他帮派来说还是公平的！”
 
There was a time in Mumbai when I was growing up in the early 90s, where the Mafia would simply go to very expensive car dealerships and look up the list of recent buyers and straight away start calling down that list to extort money. Very efficient really, it was a criminal kind of ‘sales cold calls’. Let alone businessmen, property developers and movie producers, they even started choosing doctors.
No, I would prefer not to live like that.
Wealth can be downright dangerous in such circumstances, especially if you are a law-abiding citizen.

无论你在哪里，富有总是更好的。 只要你有财富，你就有选择和机会。 贫穷剥夺了人们的权利。关于这个问题的一个假设是，在美国的话，生活在某种程度上是可取的。这可能在20世纪50年代和60年代都是真的，当时美国的生活水平一直领先于世界。那些时代已经过去很久了。在犯罪、医疗保健、教育等方面以及在基础设施发展和武器发展以外的每一个主要指标上，美国就像一个发展中国家，而不是一个发达国家。

Of course on balance it is vastly better to be rich than poor, especially in a developing nation. But in terms of your own safety from being predated upon the powerful (especially corrupt and even criminal politicians), it is often not nearly as good as even that of a middle-class citizen in the West. I suspect that it won’t be any different whether in Lagos, Caracas, Cairo or Manila.
I know I’ll get crap from some Indians for saying all of the above. And let me not overstate the case. India has come a long way since when I was raised there in the 80s and 90s. And she is still head and shoulders above many other nations. She has a free press, a people who predominantly follow a very tolerant and I daresay wise faith (Hinduism) and a reasonably good life in material terms by global standards for her upper-middle and upper classes.
 
当然，总的来说，富裕比贫穷要好得多，尤其是在发展中国家。但就你自己的安全而言，不被强权（尤其是腐败甚至犯罪的政客）掠夺，这往往远不如西方中产阶级公民的安全。我怀疑无论是在拉各斯、加拉加斯、开罗还是马尼拉都不会有什么不同。
我知道我会因为上面所说的话而受到一些印度人的指责。让我不要夸大其词。自从我80年代和90年代在印度长大以来，印度已经走过了漫长的道路。她仍然远远领先于许多其他国家。她有一个自由的媒体，一个主要遵循非常宽容的人，我敢说她是明智的信仰(印度教)的民族，按照全球标准，她的中上层阶级物质生活相当好。
 
But I’m being asked to make a straight up comparison here in the way I would play it between the choices. Never mind that many will take this as my passing judgment on the choices in general (which as I said is neither the nature of the question nor of my answer).
There are also other such considerations as how I think that the poor in America are not screwed as much for lack of material as they are for being born into broken homes. Yes, that is a crippling blow by fortune. But as I have said, the gods smiled on me very generously in that key aspect and continue to do so. If we now start taking away all personal characteristics outside of the two precise factors explicitly put into play (i.e. nation/location and wealth status), then of course all bets are off, and it’s a total crapshoot.
This then is not even a matter of that proverbial choice between being “king in hell versus the doorkeeper in heaven”.
The point is that I would choose the latter precisely because men of my stripe won’t stay limited as doorkeepers for long.
 
但是我被要求在这里做一个直接的比较，我会在两个选择之间进行比较。不用担心，许多人会把这作为我对总体选择的判断(正如我所说的，这既不是问题的本质，也不是我的答案)。
还有其他类似的考虑，比如我认为美国的穷人并不是因为缺乏物质而受到折磨，而是因为他们出生在破碎的家庭里。是的，那是命运的致命一击。但正如我所说，众神在这一关键方面对我非常慷慨地微笑，并继续这样做。如果我们现在开始剔除明确发挥作用的两个确切因素（即国家/地区和财富状况）之外的所有个人特征，那么当然所有的赌注都被取消了，这完全是一派胡言。
这甚至不是众所周知的“地狱之王与天堂的守门人”之间的选择”。
关键是，我会选择后者，正是因为像我这样的男人不会长期被限制为看门人。