You are not thinking clearly about the post you're responding to and you're not thinking clearly about the problems faced by the places you're describing. The person you're responding to probably thinks having a lot of deeply impoverished people makes a place "poor." You: some bullshit about GDP.

Look at any other objective measurement. Percent of people living below the global poverty line adjusted for PPP. Median income, 25th percentile income.

By all of those measures, the poorest states in the Deep South rank higher than many European countries.

So saying "poorer than anywhere Europe, or even the US Deep South", implies that you think the Deep South is poorer than anywhere in Europe. This is an absurd statement because the poorest places in Europe are much poorer than the poorest places in the US.

If you take the poorest zip code in the United States and look at the median income, 1st quartile income, (or even percent of people under the global poverty line adjusted for PPP), it's not even close to last place among European countries.

People have a very skewed view of the Deep South. Because parts of it are poorer than average for the rest of the country doesn't mean it's objectively poor when compared to the rest of the world.