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recently have we come to appreciate the role of natural
resources in the development of the United States economy.
Compared to the emphasis placed upon income, saving, and
trade in conventional literature, the role of natural
resources has been a neglected subject.
The poor are poor, it would seem, because they
have low incomes. They have low incomes because they are
poor. Inadequate incomes generate inadequate saving
which produces inadequate investment in both physical
and human capital. These factors together conspire to
keep the poor nations poor, and whether the way out of
this dilemma lies in the engineering of a "big push"
for the economy or in "unbalanced growth" is anybody's
guess. The important thing for us is that the problem
is seen more from the side of effective demand than
from effective supply. The implication is that sufficient
resources are to be had if only they could be employed.
Swayed by the optimism engendered by a belief in
progress, perhaps as a result of Western experience,
we have come to focus attention more upon questions of
opulence than upon the time-honored question of scarcity.
Yet, until very recent times, it was scarcity and not
plenty that was at the center of economic theory.
If we may now direct attention from the
demand to the supply side of the picture, the neglect
of natural resources is still apparent. Although
production generally is thought to depend upon the
numbers and qualities of people, the quantity and quality