“In the US, the rate of childhood poverty is worse than in almost all major countries,” Bernie Sanders said in yesterday’s debate. He didn’t specify what these major countries were but they cropped up a few more times in his responses.
Is India a major country? Is China? How about Russia or Brazil? These are enormous countries with large populations, but their childhood poverty rates are obviously much worse than in the US. If Bernie doesn’t consider these countries to be major, then which nations is he talking about? Denmark, once again? It’s a good country but hardly major.
Is the expression “major countries” a clumsy way to avoid saying “first world countries”? If so, then the result is worse than what the expression aims to avoid.
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