How the World’s Poorer Countries Keep Producing the Richest Leaders
In many nations, economic growth fuels elite wealth, not public good. Here’s how broken systems manufacture billionaires while citizens struggle.
Inequality isn’t new, but in some places it’s achieved levels of absurdity. You’d think that the sheer visibility of wealth sitting on the bones of poverty would provoke shame or at least some mild embarrassment. Instead, it’s treated as a sign of progress; proof that if one man can afford a penthouse with its own elevator for his cars, surely national prosperity is around the corner.
These are the so-called “emerging markets,” a phrase that sounds dynamic until you realize what’s really emerging is the elite’s offshore accounts. Billionaires bloom, feeding on monopoly rights, government contracts, and a steady supply of “strategic partnerships.” They’re redirecting wealth it, not creating it; siphoning off what little public value trickles through.
Meanwhile, the average citizen is still paying taxes that build nothing, and watching politicians redefine “shared prosperity” as “look at my new Rolex.” Sure, GDP numbers rise, but so do food prices, and the only thing trickling down is dust from the ceiling of a crumbling hospital.
The Miracle of the Vanishing Middle Class
A country’s wealth keeps growing on paper, billionaires keep popping up like mushrooms after rain, and yet somehow the middle class is slowly being squeezed into the economic fetal position.
GDP per capita is an elegant lie. It’s not a measure of how people live. It’s the average of everything everyone makes, which means one oil tycoon with offshore assets and nine people selling noodles on the street can still average out to a “middle-income” country. Sprinkle in a few luxury malls and a Formula One contract… “emerging market” status unlocked. All while the actual tax base emerges into a deeper hole.
The elites, of course, are not riding this wave. They’re above it. Their wealth doesn’t come from productivity, it comes from proximity. They didn’t build the economy. They were born next to it. It’s a game of musical chairs where the seats are reserved for those with the right surname, the right marriage, or the right military connection.
Meanwhile, the middle class is being crushed under the weight of informal gig work, runaway inflation, and education systems that produce more diplomas than jobs. You need a degree just to get rejected by the call center. You need a connection to get into the agency that outsources the call center.
And yet, somehow, the billionaires thrive. They glide through traffic, potholes are merely background aesthetics when your suspension costs more than a public school’s yearly budget. For them, the economy is working. It’s just not working for anyone else.
Of Rents and Rulers: Getting Filthy Rich in Just One Signature
In some countries, the fastest way to become rich isn’t to build a business or invent a product. It’s to get within pen-wielding distance of someone who signs contracts on behalf of the state. The economy doesn’t need to work for the people, it just needs to drip gold for a handful of gatekeepers.
This is the world of “point-source rents.” These are concentrated, high-value pools of money tied to things like
Oil blocks,
Mining rights,
Import licenses,
Land permits,
Massive state contracts.
The brilliance, or the tragedy depending on where you’re standing, is that these rents don’t require the economy to be functioning in any meaningful way. They don’t need widespread industry, productivity, or citizen well-being. They just need access. A well-placed friend. A minister’s cousin. A golf buddy at the customs office.
The playbook?
Secure a deal,
Inflate the value,
Skim the difference,
Park the proceeds in a holding company registered somewhere sunny.
The people? They’re just background noise, occasionally mobilized during election season with rice bags and t-shirts.
And since these rents are created by administrative fiat, anyone with a stamp and a title becomes a mini-central bank for themselves. No oversight. No competition. No visibility. Just wealth on demand.
But this kind of magic doesn’t survive scrutiny. Which is why the next priority, after looting the treasury, is controlling the narrative. This can mean:
Gag orders,
Libel laws,
Friendly media takeovers,
Flooding the news cycle with distractions.
A good scandal can always be buried under a larger, better-timed scandal.
And so the cycle continues. Rents for rulers. Silence for citizens. And the occasional $3 billion glove contract awarded to a company registered using a Gmail account.
Singapore Envy: Everyone Wants the Clean Look Without the Actual Cleaning
Singapore is the North Star for many Southeast Asian governments, at least in public speeches. It’s the go-to aspirational metaphor for clean governance, infrastructure and efficient bureaucracy. On paper, everyone wants to be Singapore. In practice, they want Singapore’s results without Singapore’s discipline.
Singapore didn’t become a global case study in governance by accident. It did it by doing all the boring, difficult, unsexy work.
It paid civil servants competitive wages, yes, but it also jailed them when they stole.
It invested in institutions that function, not just institutions that sound good on paper.
It published procurement data, rezoned land for national benefit, and held itself to account.
Singapore cleaned house, then kept cleaning.
Other countries have taken notes, but mostly from the title page.
Instead of institutional reform, they opt for cosmetic gestures.
Anti-corruption commissions get new logos and ceremonial press conferences, but no funding.
Public procurement systems get flashy digital dashboards, but all the real contracts are “classified.”
Transparency is discussed often and practiced rarely.
Real reform is inconvenient to those who benefit from the current mess. It would mean cutting off access to easy money, enforcing consequences, and removing the backdoors that power has grown comfortable using. And no one sells their luxury condo to live in a studio apartment for the sake of integrity.
So yes, everyone says they want to be Singapore. But few are willing to act like Singapore. Because behind the clean glass is a culture of accountability that doesn’t let friends off the hook.
The Billionaire Factory: Why Countries with $2,000 Incomes Still Have $200M Villas
Inequality is everywhere, but some places have turned it into a production model. In developed economies, billionaires usually emerge from the slow grind of business: tech companies, finance empires, inheritance with a few tax-advantaged upgrades. There’s at least a general sense that wealth comes from doing something. Maybe not something noble, but something.
In many lower-income states, though, billionaires don’t build things. They acquire them. Or more precisely, they acquire the right to control or resell state assets at heavily discounted, extremely friendly, no-questions-asked terms. This is gatekeeping, not capitalism. And it works very, very well for a very, very small number of people.
These fortunes come from exemptions: exemptions from competition, oversight, taxation, even prosecution. If your uncle grants you an exclusive right to import diesel, you’re not an entrepreneur. You’re just lucky enough to be born in the right family.
And while teachers go unpaid and hospitals run out of gauze, a few connected insiders are debating whether to buy a second house in London or a fourth apartment in Singapore. The optics would be funny if they weren’t so catastrophic.
In this setup, wealth detaches rather than concentrates. It has no relationship to local conditions. The more people struggle, the more space opens up to exploit scarcity through monopolies, subsidies, or phantom projects.
And somehow, these states are always too broke to fix rural schools, but never too broke to fund multi-million-dollar development zones that just happen to be run by the finance minister’s cousin.
So the billionaires keep coming. Not despite the poverty, but often because of it.
Inequality is part of the system. There will always be differences in wealth, access, and opportunity. That’s the nature of economies, of ambition, of uneven starting points. But what we see in many developing states today is the industrialisation of hoarding. A careful engineering of stagnation for the masses.
The problem isn’t the lack of money. The money is there. It just never quite reaches where it’s supposed to go. Health budgets get slashed while another airport lounge opens. Education funding dries up while yet another “emergency procurement” is pushed through without a paper trail. You don’t need a PhD in economics to know when the math doesn’t add up. You just need to look around.
So when politicians talk about emulating Singapore, ask the real questions.
Will they open the books?
Prosecute their peers?
Let the media report freely?
Or are they just after the branding while keeping the offshore accounts running?
Until real reform happens, we’ll keep watching billionaires grow while GDP per capita barely crawls. And in the meantime, someone will be trying to buy rice with a loan, while their unelected overlord takes a helicopter to lunch. Inequality may be inevitable. But this level of obviousness is a choice.
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