Norway is about 20% of it's GDP from Oil/Gas, Iraq is above 90%. I think that is also an explaination

That’s hardly surprising for anyone having been there.

its GDP

I'm reminded of a YouTube video, The Rules for Rulers, that touched on this. It makes the point that in a country with oil-based wealth, the keys to power are held by a few small elite, in contrast to a country with a 'service economy', in which case the masses are vital to the country's wealth.

[0] https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs?t=733 (Relevant segment is about 60 seconds)

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but most of those other countries have not nationalized their oil (or at least the profits) like Venezuela and Norway have.

But I'm sure they're taxing natural resources exploration at a pretty high rate.

That doesnt explain why all those other countries make so much from oil, even though some of them are at war.

That’s not true, the Saudis do very well for themselves. The entire citizen population is given massive handouts, and it seems to be working out okay. Corruption isn’t very bad, at least compared to other oil states.

Also Kuwait is doing good as well, and they have a retarded amount of oil.

But, in general, I agree that it often hurts instead of helps. But select countries like the US, Norway, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have become very prosperous from natural resources and nothing terrible has happened because of it.

>the Saudis do very well for themselves. The entire citizen population is given massive handouts,

Have you ever been to Riyadh and seen the poor state of housing, the laughable state of repair of motor vehicles, the constant complaints about the state of the education and health systems?

Perhaps they are given massive handouts but it doesn't seem to be translating into functioning infrastructure.

I think the difference is potentially that the Gulf countries - Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar etc - benefitted from being able to develop their economies and infrastructure and establish large social welfare systems in the 70s and 80s while their populations were small and oil prices and income were very high.

Here's a chart that shows Saudi per capita income from the 70s: https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/embed/?s=saunygdppcapk...

You can see that their per capita collapsed in the 80s along with oil prices. The royal families in those countries are incredibly corrupt by modern standards, but they have established a system that keeps everyone outside that circle in line with subsidies, religion and threats of imprisonment.