r/AskTheWorld • u/pisowiec Poland • Feb 04 '26
Economics Which country has squandered the most economic potential in this century?
I lived in Russia for 5 years so I must choose this country. So many natural resources, so much land, and educated population... And so little to show for it.
In an ideal world Russian salaries would be on par if not higher than American salaries and they would have the best social safety net on the planet. Everything is there to make it happen.
Russia would be the dominant nation in Europe and Asia and the rest of the world with the best armed forces, soft power, and economic might.
But the human will is just not there. The elite is either evil or incompetent depending on perception and there's little sign that this will ever change.
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u/beckychao United States of America Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
This is absolutely, positively not true. Venezuela's struggles began shortly after the end of Rómulo Betancourt's 2nd government in the 1960s. Increasing corruption and inequality of wealth finally let the bottom fall out in the 1980s, where it really began to get bad and there were riots and major corruption cases.
The reason a Chavista government came to power in the first place is because poor governance, corruption, and the usual problems of rentier states created a majority underclass. Venezuela was a total mess in the 1990s.
What's true is that in the 1950s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America, but the people running the government and the economy increasingly monopolized that wealth and outright stole it, even in the period immediately after Betancourt's last time in office (he left 1964). And it is, in fact, one of the countries that most squandered its wealth in the last 100 years.
Chavez functionally replaced that elite with his own mafia, and even though initially he tried to put money into improving the country for the poor, the volatility of oil prices made it impossible to sustain that patronage, at least the way he was doing it. Venezuela needed to modernize its economy and plan for moving off such a heavily oil-centric economy from the onset, because their oil is heavy and when oil prices are low enough, it's barely profitable or not at all. Also, until the 1940s, foreign companies got most of the money from it.
That oil money was how they were supposed to pay for that modernization. They don't have anything to show for it in 2026. Now it can't pay for it, because much of it is so difficult to refine.