Britain's politicians and business chiefs like to paint us as a world leader: a thriving, socially-progressive first world hub of technological innovation and ruthlessly efficient public services.
But last week, as I sat bathed in the glow of my laptop writing a story about the cut to local councils' road maintenance budgets - further reducing their ability to patch up our ever more pockmarked roads - it occurred to me that a new term was needed to describe Britain's socio-economic status.
Just as we use the term 'post-industrial' to describe a society that has moved beyond heavy industry and instead employs people to make flat whites and work in creative design agencies, web start-ups and investment banking, we need a fresh phrase for a country that is dismantling its national health service, savagely cutting social care and even reducing weekly bin collections.
My friend, a fiendishly clever policy wonk who works for a local authority (think Data in Star Trek), suggested "post-developed de-developing countries," which, while not particularly catchy, captures it quite nicely.
But while my friend and I were being light-hearted, the implications here are far from funny. Think this is just petty scaremongering? What the majority of people don't realise when talking about George Osborne's cuts is that most of them haven't happened yet (as my number-spouting friend put it: "we've only eaten a polo mint so far, but the main course is on its way"). A quick glance at Greece over the last year should be enough to show a) how socially and economically devastating austerity can be, and b) how fragile a lot of the institutions and services we take for granted really are. Many middle-class families there have had to rely on soup kitchens for food, while the country's homelessness statistics have soared.
Plotted on a graph, you can see local authorities budgets plummeting just as service demand from Britain's ageing population is set to sharply spike - and that isn't taking into account the extra demand created by the cuts to services (for example, cuts to adult social care will mean a rise in pensioner hospital admissions).
Don't let the talk of economic recovery fool you, the UK is set for waves of even deeper cuts. The satirical news site The Daily Mash ran a story this week headlined: "Britain to probably have some electricity in 2014." The scary thing is, I wouldn't have been that surprised if it had been genuine. It might be time to start preparing for 'post-developed, de-developing' Britain.