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Comment by tjpnz | Hacker News Reader

Have you seen Vietnam in the last 10 years? Sure, it's not what I would call a wealthy country but I didn't see much poverty either over my 6 months there - some of it spent in the countryside.

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I definitely saw it years ago up north. And it still occurs today: “In some areas stunting is as high as 75 percent. I don’t recall coming across such high rates anywhere else in the world. The average in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai is 40 percent, almost twice the national average in Vietnam.” - https://blogs.unicef.org/east-asia-pacific/visiting-nutritio...

That sentence implies the national average for stunted growth was 20% in 2015 - malnourishment is most definitely a sign of extreme poverty. Although I assume much of that is historical overhang?

I was hanging out a billiards establishment in a remote village ( population less than 10,000) a decade ago.

There were these elementary-school aged kids smoking cigarettes, cussing, etc. Eventually I realized they were 17.

Yet the largest city frequently floods with a foot of water during monsoon season.

There is growing wealth disparity with the people at the top enjoying modern luxuries, yes.

>Yet the largest city frequently floods with a foot of water during monsoon season.

Same thing can be said about parts of Tokyo during the typhoon season.

That's funny because I actually live in Tokyo.

My family also owned a property next to a guy in Vietnam who owned a collection of 30 Ferraris.

To suggest Tokyo's flooding problem is anywhere close to Saigon is disingenuous.

I'm guessing you don't live near the Tamagawa River then. Granted this was 18 months ago but I remember there were evacuations and road closures in Setagaya. Things were a bit more dire on the Kanagawa side.

I recall something similar happening the year before too.

As seen in the movie Parasite depicting the stark contrast between rich and poor South Koreans, there is a scene where the entire neighborhood is flooded

My point being, you can cherry pick and see every city gets flooded. The difference with Saigon is flooding occurs throughout the city in critical areas. Government funds and projects exists to address these issues but the whole amount never gets allocated to properly developing the sewage infrastructure. Instead, hotfixes such as building the roads higher. This is a never ending back and forth with civilians building barriers or building their house higher so the water floods back into the streets. That's just one example of lack of infrastructure

Are you trying to convince us that Tokyo has better infrastructure than Saigon?

Because I don't think anyone was arguing otherwise. The person you replied to merely said the poverty in Vietnam wasn't as bad as they expected. I'm not sure how you went from that to flooding.

To be fair, to suggest widespread flooding in SE Asia during monsoon season is proof of anything at all is kind of disingenuous.

It's an infrastructure problem that money can mitigate.

I'm really not sure what point you're arguing. That Japan is many times richer than Vietnam? (You don't say!).

People are subject to a low standard of living. That’s literally the definition of poverty. Issues like this may merely be a proxy indicator of poverty, where it is debatable whether it is just a symptom. Nevertheless, it impedes people to go about and pursue greater economic activities when they have to worry about having clean water to drink, as another example .

I wish you luck drinking tap water or even the ice cubes at a street establishment in Vietnam

Edit: also, are you not proving my point? How can the people of a country be rich if the country itself is not? Unless there is great wealth disparity with most people living in impoverished conditions. I mean, if Vietnamese people were rich, they would have satiated their appetite for food, and other standard of living items, and eventually decide as a society that maybe they should fix the infrastructure problem that is wasting everyone’s time and even introducing risks of diseases / electrocution during these periods of flooding

You're reading things that aren't there. Literally no-one has argued Vietnam or its people are rich (or even suggested anything close to it). No one.

Recap: The commentator you replied to said it's gotten better in the best decade (factually correct) and suggested it's considerably better than most Westerners think it is (an opinion/observation that also correlates with my experience, but YMMV).

From that comment, you brought up flooding in Saigon to which it was pointed out (to illustrate the absurdity of even bringing it up), that one of the richest cities in the world also has parts of it that flood.

You took that to mean they think Vietnam is wealthier than Japan (?) and that flooding is worse in Tokyo (?). No one said either of those things.

Look, you seem articulate and intelligent but no-one has even come close to saying what you keep suggesting. Please re-read the thread with a less combative mindset and realize we are all pretty much in agreement.

Tokyo's problem is caused by water flow impediment, because Tokyo is a concrete jungle. So water can't soak through the ground.

They wouldn't need those massive underground tanks to store stormwater as much if they had chosen a different approach.

Many of the trusted infrastructure and construction projects in Vietnam are actually lead by foreign teams with Japan being a notable example ( bridges, etc.)

When it comes to drainage, Vietnam didn’t take the learnings of Japan who had to learn first hand this “tech debt” of a concrete jungle. In fact, the solution in Vietnam is often layering on more layers of concrete, so water floods anywhere but the streets instead ( people’s home, who foundation is now 10 feet below ground). This is the lowest cost solution while offering the politicians a kickback, until people build their barricades high and flood the streets again.

New Orleans?