Report From Việt Nam -- Part IV

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Report From Việt Nam -- Part IV

Today I’ll focus on some economic changes going on here in Việt Nam, many of which a visitor can observe personally at least in part.

When the Việt Nam War ended in 1975, this was a very, very poor country. A site called countryeconomy.com has some statistics for the period from then to 1986. I would not take these numbers as anything exact, but rather as a rough indication of the extent to which Việt Nam was completely isolated from the world economy at that time, under the strict Communist régime imposed at the end of the war. Country Economy has Việt Nam’s per capita GDP as a big $80 in 1975, increasing to $556 in 1986 (although that includes what I would consider highly dubious increases of 283% in the single year of 1980, and another 121% single-year increase in 1986). Even if you believe those increases, $556 annual per capital GDP represents rather extreme poverty for a country. (The current U.S. figure is about $60,000.) . . .

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Report From Việt Nam -- Part II

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Report From Việt Nam -- Part II

If you come to Việt Nam as a first time tourist, of course you will have to visit the obligatory top tourist sites. Many of those tell the story of what we Americans call the Việt Nam War, and which Vietnamese unsurprisingly call the American War. In Hanoi, there is the gigantic mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh (complete with mummified body, in the great tradition of Lenin); and then the grim little building known as the “Hanoi Hilton” — the one-time French colonial prison in the downtown area that was converted to house American POWs during the period 1963-73. John McCain famously spent several years there. In Saigon, there is the museum now bearing the name “War Remnants Museum” which, we were told, formerly had the name “War Crimes Museum.”

That museum’s earlier name — War Crimes Museum — gives the better indication of its perspective on the story of the war. The Americans were “murderous oppressors.” Along with their colleagues from “mercenary satellite countries” (e.g., UK, Australia) they propped up the “puppet régime” in South Việt Nam, and viciously attacked the brave Vietnamese peasants. After many great victories, the Vietnamese finally achieved “complete liberation” of the country in 1975. Although much of this rhetoric seemed harshly anti-American, we were informed that it had been meaningfully toned down (including the museum’s name change) in the years since the American-Vietnamese reconciliation that occurred in the mid-1990s under President Clinton.

Comparing the narrative in the museum to the situation in the country today gives cause for reflection on what it means to “win” a war in today’s world. . . .

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Report From Việt Nam -- Part I

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Believe it or not, I’m currently spending several weeks on a grand tour of Southeast Asia — Việt Nam and Cambodia. As a service to readers, I thought to use the occasion to provide some on-the-scene reporting from this far-off part of the world.

Note how I have spelled the name of the country, which is how they spell it here. It’s two words. The Vietnamese use Roman letters to write their language, with a profusion of diacritical marks that convey details of pronunciation. The “e” in “Việt” actually has two such marks, a circumflex above, and also a dot below.

If you want to get news here in the English language, there are two main sources that I’ve found so far. They are (1) Việt Nam News, and (2) the New York Times International Edition. I know that I sometimes take to calling the Times “Pravda,” based on its dutiful adherence to official progressive talking points; but Việt Nam News is actually the real thing. It is a publication of the Vietnam News Agency (their spelling — I can’t explain the discrepancy), which is a government agency, of a government that very much continues to proclaim its adherence to communism. . . .

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Are There Any Problems With A 70% Marginal Income Tax Rate?

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Last weekend new “it” Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got herself interviewed by the 60 Minutes television show, and used the occasion to pitch some of her policy ideas. I wasn’t planning to use the valuable space of this blog to respond to such a thing, but then my daughters started reporting that reaction to the AOC interview had been lighting up their Facebook and Instagram feeds, with numerous comments on the order of “Wow! Finally there’s a politician who really inspires me!” Really?

The particular statement of Ms. AOC that seems to have most “inspired” these young people was her proposal to raise federal marginal income tax rates back up to 70% or so on the highest earners. In her interview, AOC noted that rates at that level had prevailed in this country in the years after World War II:

You look at our tax rates back in the ’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system. Your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops— on your 10 millionth dollar— sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.

But might such high tax rates have some adverse economic consequences? . . .

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Update: How Do You Tell If The Earth's Climate System "Is Warming"?

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Back in August I had a post by the title of “How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”? The post took note of the fact that, with a time series (like for temperature) that fluctuates up and down, you can always give a presentation that makes the trend look to be whatever you want it to be, so long as you get to pick the start date. If you want to make it look like the trend is up, you pick a start date where the value of the series is low; and if you want to make it look like the trend is down, you pick a start date where the value of the series is high. Nothing to it! With the earth’s climate system, you have nearly infinite numbers of years that you can go back to get the result you want. Those who want to convince you that the earth’s climate system “is warming” typically pick as their start date either the 1880s or the 1970s, both of which were notable low points in the temperature times series. The trick is so obvious that you would think that nobody could be fooled. But, among others, they seem to have bamboozled Google, which as that August post noted, had taken to including on YouTube videos involving climate skeptics a legend stating “Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

“Multiple lines of evidence”? Really Google, is there any “line of evidence” that matters as to whether something “is warming” or “is cooling” other than the temperature time series? They don’t enlighten us as to what that other “line of evidence” might be.

Anyway, enough months have now passed for another year to end, so we now have three full years since the most recent temperature peak, which occurred in January 2016. . . .

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