[AHF] Who's in the convergence club?

[rfmcdonald]

alt.history.future is currently one of the more interesting USENET forums I read, populated by a mixture of soc.history.what-if posters and others. Right now there's an interesting discussion about the so-called "convergence club", the collection of countries likely to make it to membership in the First World over the next half-century (1, 2). The general consensus seems to be that central Europe, if it isn't in, will be soon; Latin America, unfortunately, won't be.