Many Westerners think Vietnam’s problems went away after the American War. Independence was only the first obstacle. After the U.S. left, Vietnam still needed to secure its Western borders from a genocidal dictator and make a stand against an aggressive big brother to the north.
Your positing of centrally planned economies versus liberalised economies strikes me as deeply flawed, and the basis for such a view are my readings of authors like the economists Ha-Joon Chang and Michael Hudson, and Alex Krainer. To summarise their arguments in a brief comment is virtually impossible, so I would only direct you to them.
OK, I checked out the first persons Wikipedia page, Ha-Joon Chang. He has some criticism for hand picking data which supports his narrative and disregarding other data.
Hudson seems to have made a career criticizing the Bretton Woods agreement and promoting Modern Monetary Theory, which seems to have died as a serious topic after 2020.
Alex Krainer is the most interesting of the three, he writes on Substack and is highly critical of capitalism and he tries to sell his commodities investment system. I am reminded of those guys selling gold for subpar returns over the last 50 years. As some finance friends might say; 'they have predicted 50 of the last four recessions'.
I don't see anything useful among their collective work to promote the study of economics. All of them have socialist leanings and are very critical of the capitalist system, which I only bring up because I have no interest in discussing politics. All of them seem to share the stigma of being very fringe within the economics community.
There is no point in reading any further or making any changes. Much of this seems political and I am not really interested in a political discussion. If you have something interesting to say about Vietnam, I would love to hear it.
My Sunday afternoon reading, I laughed when you mentioned the only form of entertainment, of course we all know what that would be… my husband, as I may have mentioned went to Vietnam several times for business. He worked for Fosters Brewing as the International Risk Manager, and when Fosters formed an alliance with the Vietnamese to make beer, he had to ensure that all risk taking in the factory was eliminated. He can’t remember the name of the beer that was manufactured, “Blue something” and it was the biggest selling beer in Vietnam. This would have been around the mid 1990’s. Another very informative read.
I always look forward to your comments Sally. They always make me smile.
I can think of two beers that are close to your description. There is Tiger beer which is from Singapore, but they have a blue label and are incredibly popular. The other is Bia Saigon, who's main brand is Saigon Special which has a green label, but also Saigon Chill which comes in a blue can, but it is a specialty type of beer and not sold at many stores.
There is also KGB which has a blue label, but they are not as common.
Your husbands position would have been highly coveted in Vietnam. Beer is incredibly popular here and I am sure many uncles all over Vietnam regularly thank the efforts of your husband to make their lives a little bit better.
I think your viewpoint is very middle-class Eurocentric, or US centric. Your point that they didn't have meat every day, which for you indicates poverty, is misguided, as throughout history, and even now, there are many cultures that believe eating meat more than a couple of times per week is overindulgence. Middle class Mediterranean europeans will normally have meat once or twice per week - that is not an indication of their poverty level.
If anything, the everyday meat eating is more of an American thing.
I didn't say anything which implied I attached a value to eating meat every day. There were two paragraphs which discussed how important meat is in the Vietnamese diet, especially in the communal / festive meal, and how resourceful Vietnamese were when meat was in short supply. Do you have a problem with the Vietnamese diet?
By the way, my Vietnamese friend who told me the city part of that story got a really good laugh when I told her you thought she was too "middle-class Eurocentric, or US centric".
Great article. One thing that does concern me is the population pyramid in Vietnam which you have shown. Just like many countries currently, Vietnam is also seeing an ageing population where the working population is declining steadily and the elderly population is rising rapidly. I think this is going to cause a huge burden on Vietnam's economic growth.
I doubt that is a major issue. Vietnam is still pretty young and is still around replacement levels (they dipped below that level prior to Covid, but are back up last I checked). They are around 30 years behind many countries facing population collapse. If Vietnam gets to that point, there should already be several examples to follow of countries that have successfully solved the problem.
Do you accept civil disagreements?
If so, ...
Your positing of centrally planned economies versus liberalised economies strikes me as deeply flawed, and the basis for such a view are my readings of authors like the economists Ha-Joon Chang and Michael Hudson, and Alex Krainer. To summarise their arguments in a brief comment is virtually impossible, so I would only direct you to them.
Of course I accept disagreement. Send me some links and I will take a look.
Links: How about treating the names I listed as virtual links?
OK, I checked out the first persons Wikipedia page, Ha-Joon Chang. He has some criticism for hand picking data which supports his narrative and disregarding other data.
Hudson seems to have made a career criticizing the Bretton Woods agreement and promoting Modern Monetary Theory, which seems to have died as a serious topic after 2020.
Alex Krainer is the most interesting of the three, he writes on Substack and is highly critical of capitalism and he tries to sell his commodities investment system. I am reminded of those guys selling gold for subpar returns over the last 50 years. As some finance friends might say; 'they have predicted 50 of the last four recessions'.
I don't see anything useful among their collective work to promote the study of economics. All of them have socialist leanings and are very critical of the capitalist system, which I only bring up because I have no interest in discussing politics. All of them seem to share the stigma of being very fringe within the economics community.
There is no point in reading any further or making any changes. Much of this seems political and I am not really interested in a political discussion. If you have something interesting to say about Vietnam, I would love to hear it.
My Sunday afternoon reading, I laughed when you mentioned the only form of entertainment, of course we all know what that would be… my husband, as I may have mentioned went to Vietnam several times for business. He worked for Fosters Brewing as the International Risk Manager, and when Fosters formed an alliance with the Vietnamese to make beer, he had to ensure that all risk taking in the factory was eliminated. He can’t remember the name of the beer that was manufactured, “Blue something” and it was the biggest selling beer in Vietnam. This would have been around the mid 1990’s. Another very informative read.
I always look forward to your comments Sally. They always make me smile.
I can think of two beers that are close to your description. There is Tiger beer which is from Singapore, but they have a blue label and are incredibly popular. The other is Bia Saigon, who's main brand is Saigon Special which has a green label, but also Saigon Chill which comes in a blue can, but it is a specialty type of beer and not sold at many stores.
There is also KGB which has a blue label, but they are not as common.
Your husbands position would have been highly coveted in Vietnam. Beer is incredibly popular here and I am sure many uncles all over Vietnam regularly thank the efforts of your husband to make their lives a little bit better.
I think your viewpoint is very middle-class Eurocentric, or US centric. Your point that they didn't have meat every day, which for you indicates poverty, is misguided, as throughout history, and even now, there are many cultures that believe eating meat more than a couple of times per week is overindulgence. Middle class Mediterranean europeans will normally have meat once or twice per week - that is not an indication of their poverty level.
If anything, the everyday meat eating is more of an American thing.
I didn't say anything which implied I attached a value to eating meat every day. There were two paragraphs which discussed how important meat is in the Vietnamese diet, especially in the communal / festive meal, and how resourceful Vietnamese were when meat was in short supply. Do you have a problem with the Vietnamese diet?
By the way, my Vietnamese friend who told me the city part of that story got a really good laugh when I told her you thought she was too "middle-class Eurocentric, or US centric".
Great article. One thing that does concern me is the population pyramid in Vietnam which you have shown. Just like many countries currently, Vietnam is also seeing an ageing population where the working population is declining steadily and the elderly population is rising rapidly. I think this is going to cause a huge burden on Vietnam's economic growth.
Would that be an issue to worry about?
I doubt that is a major issue. Vietnam is still pretty young and is still around replacement levels (they dipped below that level prior to Covid, but are back up last I checked). They are around 30 years behind many countries facing population collapse. If Vietnam gets to that point, there should already be several examples to follow of countries that have successfully solved the problem.