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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   310 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 7, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Alright, adding another dose of Vietnamese news that my old man relayed to me (I am not doing any verifications of what he said) a few weeks ago that I keep forgetting to add to this thread. There are currently major bureaucratic upheavals in Vietnam.

  1. Vietnam’s administratively used to be divided into provinces, which were divided into districts, which were divided into communes. For an American observer, this can roughly maps to states, counties, wards/subcounties/districts. Note the “used to be”. Vietnam will no longer have districts (the 2nd layer).
  2. Vietnam used to have 63 provinces, there are now only 34.
  3. Lots of major secondary effects from 1 and 2. There are now lots of bureaucrats getting “early retirement”. They are getting benefits package that altogether is definitely going to create meaningful inflationary pressure at the national level. There are also now fighting up and down the layers between the remaining bureaucrats who want to keep their government jobs. You obviously don’t need two head accountant (or accounting team) for the newly-merged province. Or how can you justify having your job as the commune head when the district head of the newly-dissolved-district wants to come down to take your job.
  4. Tertiary effects on businesses because of 3. Like most developing countries, there is a lot of palms to grease at all levels. And evidence of corruption from your opponent is great for your political safety net. It wasn’t uncommon to be called-to-the-police-station-for-some-tea before, but that was just the perks for people in power, now it’s about survival for them.
  5. New accounting laws were passed last year in December but only recently came into effect that would significantly enlarge Vietnam’s taxable base. Obviously, this and 4 is driving up demand for accountants who are good and loyal. I don’t know the exact details but it seems there were a lot of businesses (think a local furniture maker) that had nominal taxes or were untaxed or really easy to cook the books, now they will be under greater scrutiny.Oh and how can we forget all this under the looming tariffs which apparently Vietnam has the highest in SEA.

All in all, major turmoil, but we will also see how the effects of this shakes out over time.

The government of (the Republic of) Ireland has chosen to impose rent control on literally the entire country. (83 percent of rented properties in Ireland already were in rent-control zones before this law went into effect.) Rent increases now are capped at 2 percent per year nationwide.

Note that the government of Ireland currently is a coalition of two right-wing parties. The most prominent left-wing party has openly stated that it would ban all rent increases for three years if it were in power.

(found via this article)

Ireland has 5 million people, in comparison to the 8 million people that live under New York City's rent control.

The government of Italy has approved a plan to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina, between Calabria and Sicily. Completion is scheduled for year 2032.

"Right wing" has a weird meaning in Europe... I am eagerly expecting a fresh crop of horror stories (in addition to the plenty we have in NY) to follow.

Thanks for the thread! I’ve been following the ongoing situation in Ukraine closely — particularly the shifting dynamics in the eastern regions and how international aid is being affected by political changes in donor countries. Also started reading about the global impact of China’s economic slowdown, especially in Africa and Latin America. Curious what others are watching this week

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