Report From Việt Nam -- Part V

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Apologies for the lack of posts for the past several days. I have been out of internet range. I will try to make it up over the next several days.

Here is some history of agricultural production in Việt Nam. My source is the book “Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present” by Ben Kiernan. Kiernan is a professor at Yale. The book was published in 2017.

When Ho Chi Minh’s communists gained control of the northern part of Việt Nam in the early 1950s, one of their first significant projects was a systematic “land reform” that included evicting the pre-existing landlords and collectivizing agriculture in the Stalinist model. From Kiernan (page 431):

Led by then-[Việt Nam Workers Party] secretary general Truong Chinh and backed by Ho Chi Minh from the start, [“land reform”] involved two major processes. The first comprised land reform proper, the redistribution to poor peasants of lands held by landlords, “rich peasants,” and even many middle peasants. . . . [T]he results [came] with a high level of violence. Landlords and rich peasants had not merely lost their lands. Thousands were killed, including some of those who formerly comprised 29 percent of the membership of village party committees.

Kiernan provides fewer details, but a similar process took place in the South both before and after the communist victory in the early 1970s. How did that land redistribution and agricultural collectivization work out? . . .

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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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