People and countries, in case you haven’t noticed, behave differently. Yes, some representatives of both categories can be described as sanctimonious or bombastic or dysfunctional, but the parallels break down quickly when you try to find examples of people who pretend they got rich by accident. To the contrary: People like to tell you how they achieved success through dint of hard work, smarts, or some other skill that reflects well upon them.

Some countries do pretend, however, their status among the world’s wealthy happened by some manner of serendipity.