Few countries are better placed than Vietnam to get rich

One thing people don't realize about Vietnam is that there is a TON of wealth there. On the outside it looks really poor and run down, but that is because people either don't know how to spend their money or they don't have anything to buy. For example, it wasn't until recently that Apple even opened an official store there. A country coming out of extreme war and poverty never developed a culture to be showy. The most people can do is spend a ton of money to import products by paying heavy customs fees. So, they've spent the last 30+ years saving money. As you can imagine, people are sitting on tons of it.

Our World in Data has graphed scores for countries on the UN's Human Development Index against their CO2 emissions per capita. [1] Vietnam is remarkable in having a respectable HDI score with CO2 emissions among the lowest. If we want to create a sustainable future, there are lessons we can learn from Vietnam.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-co-emissions-v...