… is from pages 82-83 of the late Peter Bauer’s essay “Ecclesiastical Economics: Envy Legitimized,” which is Chapter 5 of Bauer’s excellent 1984 book, Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development:
Sustained prosperity, as distinct from occasional windfalls, owes little or nothing to natural resources: witness West Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The wide differences in economic performance between individuals and groups in the same country with access to the same natural resources throw into relief the personal and cultural differences behind economic achievement.