> I often see this sentiment about African nations but I almost never see thought beyond this into the root causes.
There's a large literature on this in political science and development economics. The subject is known as the "resource curse".[0]
There's a large literature on this in political science and development economics. The subject is known as the "resource curse".[0]
This is the type of comment I was talking about, putting the blame on fate. The United States has lots of natural resources, as does China, and many other developed and industrialized nations. These nations got developed and industrialized by exploiting the resources of poorer nations, colonizing them, ruining the existing local governments and economies in order to optimize them for resource extraction, and then leaving abruptly in the middle of the 20th century.
The poorest state in the US is Mississippi. That is the legacy of slavery. The second poorest state is West Virginia, which ironically shares a border with Maryland, the richest in the country. That's not an accident nor a testament to the allegedly poor character of Appalachians as a distinct cultural group separate from the rest of America. That was completely by design, because you can more easily manipulate a group of people if you force them to fight for scraps. That is the legacy of extractive industry in Appalachia. And so the cycle of rural poverty continues. Don't let them fool you with the "Trump Country" narrative or "Hillbilly Elegy".
So, it’s doing well compared to most of the world. The median household income is still $43,469 which is better than say Japan at least in nominal terms.