To save money, Vietnam laid off 100,000 civil servants at once!
Musk is making a big fuss about laying off civil servants in the US. But few people noticed that next door to Vietnam, also engaged in a major slimming, a one-time layoff of 100,000 civil servants. The relevant organizations that have been abolished include five ministries, five national television stations, 10 government newspapers, 19 government magazines, and more than 200 institutions. Among these organizations, there are 13 general departments, 738 divisions and 3,303 sub-divisions.
The entire layoff program, not counting the people in the institutions, is more than 100,000 civil servants alone. Why do we have to lay off so many people? At the core, there is just one reason: to save money.
The Vietnamese government can’t afford to support so many people. You may not be able to imagine, Vietnam to pay the salaries of civil servants and public organizations, we have to spend 10% of the annual GDP, accounting for 35% of Vietnam’s fiscal budget. That is to say, 1 3 of the annual revenue, have to be taken to support people. As a result, Vietnamese people have no money to build high-speed railroads, no money to build nuclear power plants, no money to build roads and bridges, no money to provide free and compulsory education, and so on.
The U.S. can’t afford to take 10 percent of its budget to pay salaries. In Vietnam, the proportion of wages to the budget is so high that it is outrageous. Why does Vietnam have so many people in the system? There are two main reasons
First, Vietnam’s innovation and liberalization, relatively slow, retained a lot of historical remnants of the Cold War era. Like China, in the 1980s and 1990s, there was already a wave of layoffs in the system. And Vietnam? It has just begun, and the historical baggage is too heavy. Secondly, Vietnam’s institutions are simply too bloated. You can’t imagine that Vietnam has a land area of only 330,000 square kilometers, but there are 58 provinces and 5 municipalities, a total of 63 provincial administrative districts. Many provinces in Vietnam are not as big as a county in China.
Vietnam has a three-tier administrative system of provinces, counties and communes, with more than 800 counties and more than 10,000 communes. The whole administrative system is very large and bloated, and there are many organizations at all levels.
This wave of big layoffs in Vietnam is not copying Musk’s homework, but copying China’s homework. Because Vietnam’s innovation and opening up is copying the Chinese model. Its government layoffs and streamlining of institutions are also following China. It’s just that China accomplished these tasks 30 years ago, while Vietnam is just getting started. Vietnam’s aim is simple: to improve government efficiency and prepare for big infrastructure to drive high GDP growth.
To engage in big infrastructure, the most important thing is not money, but to optimize the process, improve administrative efficiency, and attract investment to the world. For example, to build a road, you can’t stamp 30 or 40 stamps before you can start, you have to streamline the organization, simplify the process, and start quickly. That wave of layoffs left money, what to do? You see Musk layoffs, saving money is to pay off the U.S. national debt. What about Vietnam? It’s not to pay off the debt, it’s invested in education to train the next generation.
Vietnam laid off 100,000 civil servants, and with the money they saved, they are going to set up a free education system from kindergarten to high school. What is the most expensive thing in the 21st century? Talent is the most expensive. As long as we are in the Confucian cultural circle, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, there is not a single country that does not emphasize education. The most educated people in the world are all in the Confucian cultural circle. Westerners advocate happy education, but the Confucian cultural circle only believes in competitive education. They use extreme internal scrolling and fierce competition to screen and cultivate the best talents in the world.
Even in the United States, Chinese people are desperate to roll education. Vietnam has a lot of young people, but there is too much lack of high quality talent. And the Vietnamese are not yet rich enough to become an educational powerhouse by relying on family investment. To quickly realize the mass training of talents, it is necessary to rely on state investment.
But this round of reform in Vietnam has not touched the deep water. Because in Vietnam, the military is in business and has extended its tentacles to almost every corner of profiteering, including oil, telecommunications, real estate, medical care, finance, logistics and transportation, as well as department stores and supermarkets. Any industry that can rely on monopoly resources to make a lot of money is almost always taken by the Vietnamese military. The Vietnamese military owns 102 large state-owned enterprises with annual revenues of more than $20 billion, accounting for 10 percent of Vietnam’s GDP. It is important to know that Vietnam’s military spending is only $5 billion a year.
However, the money of the Vietnamese military is independent accounting, and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam. No matter how short of money Vietnam’s finance is, it can’t handle the military’s money. If the Vietnamese military is not banned from doing business, the more Vietnam’s economy grows, the stronger the military’s control over Vietnam’s economy will be.
Why doesn’t Vietnam ban the military from doing business? It’s not that they don’t want to, but they can’t. Vietnam tried three times and all failed, there was too much resistance. In Vietnam today, the military’s involvement in business is already an embezzlement of the treasury’s tax base, and the tail is wagging the dog.
Leave a Reply