Why is economic output per person seven times higher on one side of the US-Mexico border than on the other? Why is the average Canadian twelve times richer than the average Moroccan, despite having similar size populations?
We are often invited to believe that a society’s relative success has a lot to do with its geography or climate. Not so.
There are plenty of resource-rich countries in Africa, blessed in every imaginable way by geography and climate, that still produce only grinding poverty. Conversely, there are plenty of resource-poor places, such as Japan or Iceland, that prosper.
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