Why do americans call people outside their country as third world..when?

Question

all the successful ppl in america are foreigners eg:
Arnold -Austrian,Hotmail-India,Yahoo-India,biggest mc donald-India, silicone valley-maximum Indians,clubs own by Russian, and many more so if couple of people from so called 2nd or 3rd world country are ruling what about majority of them.

Answer 1

Americans do not refer to all countries outside the US as "Third World Countries" and not all successfull people in America are "foreigners". The term "Foreigner" refers to people who are "foreign-born". The majority of successful people in American were born in America.

What make a country "Third World" is their common characteristics, such as poverty, high birthrates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/ThirdWorld_def.html

Answer 2

Did you just say Mcdonalds is Indian? Although there IS a Mcdonalds in India i'm pretty sure it didn't start there..and you answered your own question when you said "successful people in america" They came here to be successful because they couldnt do it in their THIRD WORLD COUNTRY. That clear it up?

Answer 3

Do you even know what a third-world country is? India is sometimes called a third world country because a vast region of India isn't modernized and contains a large area filled with poverty.

Answer 4

The term "third world" was officially used by the United Nations in the 1960's to describe many poor and small countries. The term was later changed to"under-developed nations" and finally to "developing nations"

Answer 5

Third World is a term first coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy to distinguish nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Today, however, the term is frequently used to denote nations with a low UN Human Development Index (HDI), independent of their political status (meaning that the PRC, Russia and Brazil, all of which were very strongly aligned during the Cold War, are often termed third world).

Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, childbirth, and other factors for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare.

Answer 6

According to Wikipedia :

"The UN Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, childbirth, and other factors for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. The index was developed in 1990 by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq, and has been used since 1993 by the United Nations Development Programme in its annual Human Development Report.

The HDI measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development:

A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth.
Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weight).
A decent standard of living, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in USD. "

I would agree that most Americans do see people outside of the USofA/Canada/UK/France/Germany/Italy/Switzerland/Finland/Sweden/Denmark/Spain/Japan, and a few other places as being thrid world.

Answer 7

They don't.

Usualy 3rd world is used only for undeveloped (echenomicaly) countries... no clue why though.

Answer 8

Americans dont know that the whole software and wbsites are run by indians in india

Answer 9

O.K. when we refer to 3rd world, we refer to countries, not people.

Answer 10

why do those people come HERE and become succesful?? and besides, we only refer to 3RD WORLD COUNTRIES as 3rd world countries, not all countries.