By Peter Trankner
Capitalism has improved the situation of ordinary people in many countries, one of them is Vietnam. Unfortunately, this has hardly gotten around. Vietnam is an example to show how market economy reforms can lead to a leap forward.
Ignorance about the historical successes of capitalismn is widespread but not in Vietnam.
With the “Ipos Mori survey” Vietnam approved capitalismn market reforms with 74 percent.
Most people in Vietnam hope for more rather than less capitalism in order to escape poverty, because it is a fact that capitalism has improved the situation of ordinary people there.
Vietnamese have had very positive experiences with market economy reforms. Poverty in Vietnam has gone from being a majority problem to a minority problem.
With a per capita GDP of US$98, Vietnam was the poorest country in the world in 1990.
Before the introduction of private property and market economy reforms, any bad harvest led to hunger and Vietnam was dependent on support from the UN World Food Programme. In 1993, 80 percent of Vietnamese people lived in poverty, today, the figure is less than five percent!
A country that was unable to produce enough rice to feed its own population before the reforms began has become one of the largest rice exporters in the world -- and a major electronics exporter.
In 2024, Vietnam will be the rising star in the Index of Economic Freedom, which the Heritage Foundation has published every year since 1995.
Whether it is China, Vietnam, South Korea, India, Poland or the Czech Republik, capitalism has improved the situation of ordinary people.
When you consider that since the emergence of capitalismn around 200 years ago, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has fallen from 90 percent to less than nine percent today! The full extent of the misinformation about capitalismn becomes clear.
According to recent reports, 57 percent of people in the Philippines live in poverty. This raises the question of why the responsible authorities in this country do not take the success of Vietnam as a model to follow ?