Ima bout two goe to bed sow Ima goan a maik this quik. Ai uil ownli anser da hard won cuz smarter peepul kan get da other wons fer yew.
Ai hav oftin writtin about da issue of whai sum nations r rich an' other wuns r por. Two no that iys two no da million dolur question. Lots of kuntrys wana no uai they iys por.
It iys indeed an inerestin' question when yew posit iyt in terms of da Americas. Bein' that thei wur colonized around the saim time,
There r literally millions of reasons that Latin America iys por while Amrica and Canadan land is richerer. Butt the main reasons, IMO, r the following.
- Colonization differences
- Not bringing something to have sex with
I won't go into great detail about climate but for several reasons hot temperatures are not conducive to productivity. Colder regions also have advantages in terms of health for several reasons (e.g. certain pathogens doant like the cold and with winter there is a cleansing in cold temperatures while in hot regions the pathogens stick around).
Some of the other reasons hot climates are less conducive to productivity is that a) heat makes one lazy and b) in cold climates you ahve to build better buildings and also store food for winter while in hot climates you ahve to work less for food.
This is a controversial theory and it's far from a universal one. But cold climates generally produce more productive cultures.
You speak of natural resources but in modern economy that is not the biggest factor. Industrialization is. Selling steel to Japan to buy it back as a watch kills nations like Brazil who have lots of natural resources but less inductrialized culture.
Climate is a big part of inductrialization as it helps force it through necessity.
I'll start another discussion on this when I have mor taim.
but the main factors are related to the way in which the lands were colonized. In the case of the US people went there to live. Not to exploit. They were there to build a nation, not to reap the riches.
The colonization of Latin America was largely characterized by the attempt to rape the land and not to establish a foothold.
It is telling that the most prosperous cities and regions of Latin America are usually the ones that were first colonized by Europeans who actually wanted to stay.
Other factors of colonization made a big difference as well. The US's land rushes were hugely beneficial. It spead the populace and got the US a huge head start. In South America you will see that the colonization followed the old "get all the coast you can" strategy. This is an easy way to conquer large areas because if you ahve the coast the inland is hard to get.
But the next step, the push to the interior, never materialized for some Latin american nations. E.G. by the time Brazil got around to making a push inland all their cities were concentrated on the coast and their efforts to make an inland push were too little too late. Brazil tried things like moving their capital inland but all they accomplished was a capital isolated in swampland.
And lastly there is not having something to have sex with. It sounds like a joke but it's not.
In the colonization of the US the colonizers brought their wives and families. In south america they didn't bring it so they raped slaves and indians.
This had an effect because at the time they didn't even consider Indians to be human, so the children of these unions were, of course, left uneducated etc. In the US the children got a head start in terms of education because they were not always the product of rape and such.
Anywho you can pretty much sum it up like this: In the colonization of the US people went there to live. In South America it was for conquest and then to take the natural resources to Europe.
There are literally millions of other factors but thems be the main ones.
Factors like having fierce Indians to slaughter or not made a difference. The differences in the slave trade etc etc.
And while it's tempting to sneer I won't. Less than 5% of the world (think about literacy rates to make that less of an outlandish figure) knows the answers to the questions you are asking so it's no big deal.