This is terrible to say, but you have to (my belief) basically wait for that older generation to die and the newer one to mature to undo the effects of that regime.

There is a crazy game theory degradation when you lose trust and corruption rises. It’s hard to convey just how insidious and broken such a society is. And this is communism, not socialism which appears to be fine based on Western European experience.

One of Mitt Romney’s coworkers at Bain wrote a book a few years ago and France is actually more productive than America and has grown faster, as measured on GDP dollars per capita per hour. Aka they are more productive. Yet USA works like 2100 hours per year and France is closer to 1700, which is why you have the GDP per capita differential.

End of the day, institutions matter.