Visiting cities is also a misleading way to compare the U.S. in particular to anywhere else. I have family in town in Mississippi that has less than 10,000 people. But the town has a household income over 60% of the national household income. Cost of living adjusted, they’re about as well off as someone in a top tier city. Someone with a median household income can afford a newly renovated, 4 bedroom, 2,500 square foot house.
Basically in every country of the world you can travel one hour from big cities and get in a place deep in the fields or the woods with very different needs and dynamics from the city. They could be different countries and maybe both cities and countryside will be better off if we could have fractally composed states with different laws and regulations.
I love Tokyo too (never been to Shanghai), because I’m an asian collectivist at heart. But you can’t really compare across cultures when they’re optimizing for different things. Americans are very wealthy and spend a lot of their wealth optimizing to never have to be near other people.
It’s not difficult to find areas in all these countries that are significantly less developed than Spain/Portugal’s underdeveloped areas. It’s just not as black and white as you seem to suggest.
(I come from EU but have been living in various countries in Asia for over a decade)
> I am still shocked Spain/Italy and USA are considered 'first world' countries.
They're a mix. Rural southern Italy isn't the same as e.g. Milan or Venice. I've walked from 1st world to third world within a few blocks in San Francisco. It's a slightly longer walk in Cape Town.
> I was surprised by the penetration level of the mobile devices - everything had a QR code, you could buy/sell/send money,
I've has exact same experience in places in Africa (1). Yes there's poverty and crime, but also if the technology is affordable, effective and reduces the need to handle cash then it's adopted fast enough.
People's understanding of that part of the world is also decades out of date. Mobile devices actually "leapfrogged" the wired telecoms network rollout (2), but that was decades ago. Africa is huge and diverse, and it is not going to be China this decade, but also it's changing fast.
And it might be China-aligned as China positions to be a reliable trading partner with affordable goods. It's possible that affordable Chinese solar-battery electricity systems will cause another leapfrog. This includes Chinese EVs (3).
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2) https://mg.co.za/news/tech/2014-06-12-cellphones-create-a-te...