Or is it Colonel Sanders
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| Southeast Asia | |
| Communist Vietnam Gets First Taste of the Big Mac | |
| 2014-02-09 | |
| [An Nahar] Four decades after the Vietnam war ended, US fast-food giant McDonald's opened its first restaurant in the communist country Saturday, aiming to lure a rising middle class away from rice and noodles. "Y'want nuoc mam with that?" The arrival of one of the most potent symbols of US capitalism in southern Ho Chi Minh City -- known as Saigon when American troops dramatically withdrew in 1975 -- is the result of a partnership with the son-in-law of Vietnam's powerful Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. McDonald's is following US rivals Burger King, KFC and coffee giant Starbucks into Vietnam -- a country many Americans associate more with an unpopular war than a newly wealthy middle class. But with its 90 million-strong population and average per capita income of more than $1,500, "Vietnam is on the radar now" for US franchises, said Sean Ngo, managing director of consulting firm Vietnam Franchises Ltd. Critics ...and there are always critics... say that Vietnam's rapid economic growth since "Doi Moi" reforms opened up the country in the early 1990s masks rising inequality and inefficiencies in an economy still dominated by state-owned enterprises.
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 Is this why you lived in the jungle all those years? So your kids could eat Big Macs and drink Starbucks? You could have had all this without all the napalm or the millions killed! Talk about a waste. It wasn't really their choice, most of them were drafted and in the case of VC's extorted ("join us or we come back and kill your kids.") And really, in this case, they're only slightly less unfree under "Prime Minister's Son-in-Law Capitalism" than they are under Communism. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-02-09 17:02 |
| #6 Does this Capitalist approach indicate we "won"? |
| Posted by: Uluger Gonque8978 2014-02-09 16:35 |
| #5 My message to any Victor Charlies and Nathanial Victors who stumble by the 'burg: Is this why you lived in the jungle all those years? So your kids could eat Big Macs and drink Starbucks? You could have had all this without all the napalm or the millions killed! Talk about a waste. |
| Posted by: Florida Al 2014-02-09 13:55 |
| #4 But every minimum wage graduate of McDonald's front and back lines will have learnt important lessons in becoming a successful capitalist. So that's ok. Be the son-in-law of the Prime Minister? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-02-09 12:18 |
| #3 Great. In a generation they will be fat and stupid too. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2014-02-09 09:05 |
| #2 But every minimum wage graduate of McDonald's front and back lines will have learnt important lessons in becoming a successful capitalist. So that's ok. In the the case of the |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-02-09 03:28 |
| #1 I understand that the Vietnamese Ronald McDonald bares a striking likeness to Ho Chi Minh. Or is it Colonel Sanders |
| Posted by: Au Auric 2014-02-09 01:09 |