I'm so far in the hinterlands that I officially live in a country that doesn't exist :) And yes, it is superior in every way to the United States.

As for the rest, this is an interesting article, but it's more of a 1000-ft view thinkpiece than an effort to really dig into the deeper roots of what's at the foundation of this (genuine) experience that people are having that "woah, poor people over THERE seem to be living better lives than me."

Not my article to write, so all I can do is show you the pillars:

1) The term "Third World" is incredibly outdated and from a colonial era mindset. It automatically frames a given country as LESS THAN another one. Furthermore, it isn't even based on anything objective. Even the purchasing power parity indices (aka hard numbers) don't align with what people who use the framework of "First/Third World" think applies to a given country. Much more accurate is Global South/Global North.

2) The 1950s weren't when the USA resembled Mexico. More like the 1750s. Back when a guy like Daniel Boone could wrestle a bear and make moonshine in the cabin he built himself before becoming a lawyer and then serving in Congress.

3) What makes people of ALL countries and ALL regions happy is working with their hands. Not their finger(s), but their whole hands. Swiping, clicking, gesturing, and tapping = unhappy. Touch typing = happy, along with, of course, all the other thousands of occupations that require use of both hands, from sweeping floors to sculpting to machining precision parts to bushcrafting to camping to gardening to knitting, et al. If you want to suck the soul right out of a person's body, give them a job that doesn't require the use of their hands (very much). That may sound simplistic, but look at literally anyone you know who he is happy with their job/career/occupation and you'll see that I'm right.

3b) It just occurred to me that there's a way to prove this - some (mostly younger) surgeons now use robots (the most popular is called "DaVinci" for some reason) to assist/perform some procedures, while other (mostly older) surgeons go strictly with their hands and haptic feel to perform the exact same procedures. Guess which cohort has less career burnout/turnover and fewer post-surgical complications?

You've got a good instinct for what's going on in our reality. Just need to bury your nose deeper into the stratum, my friend, instead of getting lost in the clouds.