GOOD QUESTION, AND THE ANSWER IS “EASILY”.
Quite easily. Statistically it is very close to a certainty. Why? Becuase (uncomfortable truth) the difference between first world and third world countries is the size of the underclass. First world countries, during the medieval period, were successful in reducing the underclasses through aggressive use of law, war, malthusian crop yields, and disease.
Today’s third world countries cannot produce goods and services of sufficient value to compete on the world’s markets. Ergo there is no means of organizing a voluntary organization of production (consumer capitalist economy).
In painful terms, the reality is that as a nation’ s IQ drops below 100, the ability to compete on the world stage is increasinlly difficult, and as far as I am able to determine, that number will only increase over time.
If you add to that problem, a regressive religion, or a familial low trust culture, or a tendency for corruption, or the ‘resource curse’, then the problem is impossible to overcome.
As far as I know, south africa and brazil are the most likely futures available to the western world.
Americans have imported vast numbers of third world underclasses who are breeding at rates far above those with superior genetic markers. So as far as I can see, there is no way of fixing this problem now.
The only prudent peoples on the planet today are the swiss and the japanese.
https://www.quora.com/Can-the-USA-become-a-third-world-country