The direct causes of wealth increases are technologies. That are transformed into consumer goods and service. It is summarized in per capita income statistics. Technologies affect the wealth of the country. They produce high quality goods and provide great service. They ameliorate the quality of goods and service. They increase the availability of goods and services to more people by burning back the effort, waste, and cost to produce them.
There are other ways to increase per capita incomes. If political leaders put more people to work, but how far can you push people?
Thus, a country must import technology that produces more and better goods and services for its own people.
This attainment of economic wealth requires large amounts of capital. It's a vicious cycle: technology depends on capital, which depends on technology, etc. Karl Marx acknowledged this cycle in his treatment of "M-C-M" (money-capital (= technology) -money). Therefore, an initial loan or grant of "seed money" is required. Such loans, as we have seen from World Bank, IMF, and WTO efforts, do not necessarily make countries rich. Example is Nepal.
Rural areas that have poor transportation facilities must devote much of the acquired technology to improving it. This was performed in the formative years in the U.S. Otherwise, supplies cannot reach producers and products cannot reach customers cheaply.
