Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host Andrew Heaton.

In 1990, Vietnam was one of the poorest nations on earth, by some estimates the poorest.

It had a per capita GDP of $98,

lower than that of Somalia and Sierra Leone.

Now that's just a number, of course.

I realize it's hard to understand what those numbers mean in abstract, so let's try to humanize it. This is a period in Vietnamese history, very recent Vietnamese history, where calling someone fat was a compliment, because excess body weight implied enough prosperity to put it on.

People visiting Vietnamese cities in 1990 would sometimes notice the auspicious lack of birds because people there resorted to trapping and eating the birds, even sparrows.

Imagine going to Pittsburgh and saying,

gosh, there aren't a lot of pigeons here.

Why is that?

And then realizing it's because everyone in Pittsburgh was so poor that they trapped and ate them.

Vietnam was at that level. Families of four people sharing a one bedroom apartment

couldn't get by on their salaries

so they would raise pigs in the bathroom

as an unofficial left-hand job

so that they could get things to trade on the black market.

Now today, fortunately, Vietnam is a comparatively middle class country.

Poverty, once crippling and widespread, has been significantly and laudably reduced.

But unfortunately, Somalia and Serleone, which were almost as poor as Vietnam 30 years ago,

have not enjoyed that same economic miracle.

Vietnam and Sierra Leone were both very poor, but one nation climbed out of poverty and

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