| {{B}}
The "standard of living" of any country means the average person's share of the goods and services the country produces. A country's standard of living, {{U}}(51) {{/U}} , depends first and {{U}}(52) {{/U}} on its capacity to produce wealth. "Wealth" in this sense is not money, for we do not live on money {{U}}(53) {{/U}} on things that money can buy: "goods" such as food and clothing, and "services" such as transport and "entertainment". A country's capacity to produce wealth depends upon many factors, most of {{U}}(54) {{/U}} have an effect on one another. Wealth depends {{U}}(55) {{/U}} a great extent upon a country's natural resources. Some regions of the world are well supplied with coal and minerals, and have fertile soil and a favorable climate; other regions possess none of them. Next to natural resources {{U}}(56) {{/U}} the ability to turn them to use. China is perhaps as well-off {{U}}(57) {{/U}} the USA in natural resources, but suffered for many years from civil and external wars, and {{U}}(58) {{/U}} this and other reasons was {{U}}(59) {{/U}} to develop her resources. Sound and stable political conditions, and {{U}}(60) {{/U}} from foreign invasions, enable a country to develop its natural resources peacefully and steadily, and to produce more wealth than another country equally well favoured by nature but less well ordered. A country's standard of living does not only depend upon the wealth that is produced and consumed {{U}}(61) {{/U}} its own borders, but also upon what is directly produced through international trade. {{U}}(62) {{/U}}, Britain's wealth in foodstuffs and other agricultural products would be much less if she had to depend only on {{U}}(63) {{/U}} grown at home. Trade makes it possible for her surplus manufactured goods to be traded abroad for the agricultural products that would {{U}}(64) {{/U}} be lacking. A country's wealth is, therefore, much influenced by its manufacturing capacity, {{U}}(65) {{/U}} that other countries can be found ready to accept its manufactures. |