There is an old saying thWhat do Russia, Iran and Venezuela have in common besides not having the best interests of their citizens in mind? The answer is a lot of oil revenue.
Back when large royalty gas checks were flowing through Freestone County, my father-in-law referred to it as mailbox money, and that money, a lot of times, got treated differently than money you earned by dragging yourself out of the bed early in the morning and going somewhere to grind out a living. Some people used it to buy things they would have never desired rather than putting it aside for a stormy day.
The same principle applies to nations with oil revenue. It’s like that old saying when describing irascible peopled: “They would rather rule in Hell rather than serve in Heaven.” The three mentioned have border problems different than us. Their citizens are trying to crawl through to get out. The main thing that enables the regimes to survive is their vast oil revenues that enable their economies to keep functioning.
An example even closer to home is the private school voucher program to take public tax revenue and give it to private schools. Even though polls indicate a majority of Texas citizens don’t approve, it will probably pass in the next session. The reason is that two West Texas billionaire oilmen decided they would spend their mailbox money to reward or punish politicians in primary elections where few people vote to promote this issue. The election results in November will vindicate their strategy.
