system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why poor countries remain poor. 

I don't mean to sound ignorant, I just never understood why third world countries don't get richer over time. Shouldn't they have caught up with the rest of the world or at least improved some bit by now? A lot of countries are supposedly getting poorer.
gpt
A pair of economists recently won a Nobel prize for attacking this very question, which is not easy to answer. Many theories have been proposed, several of them given as answers here, such as access to natural resources.  Their theory is that the key factor is the political culture. If people believe that they have a chance to prosper by working hard or taking risks, then the country tends to do well economically. If the people believe that their property or business might be taken by those with more power or connections, or there is some other major source of disparity, then the country does not do well economically over time.