suzannegoh

2 hours ago, Pattayabeerbacon said:

Yep recieving 2 dollars a day whilst recovering from alcohol addiction in a third world country is spoiled.

Maybe not as spoiled as Aussies who have enough money to buy an iPhone and a plane ticket to Thailand and then complain that if they don't go back to Oz after a certain amount of time they'll get cut off the dole.  But it's close.

 
There is 9 jobs in perth today, in a city of over 2 million.
 
How do i get money when there is no job to goto MR?

11 hours ago, CNX GUY said:

this is a very good topic to have raised, I think it is a fascinating question. fathers are fascinating because, to a pretty great extent, they make the world what it is.

 

and that is why I hate my father.

 

was he a bad man? certainly not! did he abuse me, no!

 

however, with a combination of shall we say a high score on the narcissist scale, and a very low score on the accomplishment scale, he represents everything that is wrong with the world and makes it a pretty terrible place.

 

there's nothing wrong with being a nothing, but there is something very wrong with being a nothing while insisting you are a something.

 

that's why we humans never make any progress and that's why I "hate" my father.

The way that you have it figured, are you a better man than your father?  It sounds like he was a man if his time and circumstances and you are a man of yours.

My take is CM is some sort of millenial SJW wannabe hipster hamlet up in cold north...

Are you sure you can use TransferWise to send money out of Thailand?

9 hours ago, bristolboy said:

Net neutrality is not what you think it is. It has nothing at all to do with alleged censorship. Here is a succinct explanation:

Network neutrality, or more simply net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet communications equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

Yes, that's what Net Neutrality was sold to the public as being.  The name "Net Neutrality" implies to most people that it's about "Net Fairness" so all sorts of things get blamed on Net Neutrality (or the lack thereof) that actually have nothing to do with Net Neutrality. 

However that definition is too simplistic to be a cornerstone principle and even the FCC recognized that.  There are lots of legitimate technical reasons to prioritize one type of traffic over another, and because of that the FCC implemented a process to approve exceptions and when NN was in effect they approved almost all requests.  So instead of Net Neutrality being implemented as originally defined, what consumers got was a committee micromanaging ISPs' technical decisions.

 

1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

Well it may not be scarce in the matter of supply, but access to it is very limited for most people. Not much competition out there. And the Republican Congress actually outlawed any governments from providing Internet Service.

If the issue is a lack of competition, the remedy already exists to use anti-trust laws to break up regional monoplies that dominate the market now. Unfortunately the Net Neutrality approach does the opposite in that it legitimizes those monopolies by regulating them in place rather than breaking them up. That's why Comcast was a supporter of Net Neutrality, they knew that if they played ball with the government by going along NN rules that no one would try to break up the company.

2 hours ago, helpisgood said:

Some pols like to stoke the fear of "heavy-handed" govt. regs.  Maybe that's a holdover from the Cold War?  Sure, regs can be less than perfect.

 

However, power is power whether it is from the public or private sectors.  Large private corporations can also be heavy-handed towards smaller businesses and the general public.  Just ask competitors of giants like Amazon or Walmart.   

 

As I recall, the seminal legislation on all of this is the Communications Act of 1934 (an easy read from Wikipedia is linked below).  Congress made the American public the essential owners of the airways, not the networks, large corporations and so on.  Although the radio/TV signals that used to fill the airways are now, due to modern technology, often sent through cables, wires, etc., it is conceptually the same thing.

 

So, whatever happened to antitrust and control of unfair competition?  Capitalism can be a wonderful system.  However, like all forms of competition, there needs to be some sort of officiating for the sake of smaller businesses and, more importantly, the general public.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

 

Anti-trust law and Net Neutrality are two separate issues.  Net Neutrality regulates the mechanics of the internet (for instance, prioritization of one type of traffic over another) and gave the FCC jurisdiction over that.  Without Net Neutrality, anti-trust laws still apply and the FTC has primary jurisdiction; with Net Neutrality anti-trust laws still apply but there is an additional layer of regulation imposed by the FCC. 

Where I disagree with Net Neutrality is not over its stated intent (which is basically to require ISPs to be more fair) but over the practicality & need to regulate a commodity (bandwidth) whose supply has been doubling every 18 months for the past 20 years as if it's a scarce commodity.

Can congress compel any citizen to make their tax returns public or is this something special for the president?

18 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

 

You'd have to be stupid to park money in Thai banks.

 

You're looking at it from the POV of someone who is strapped for cash.  If that money would otherwise be sitting in a cash account in the West and you spend more than 800K baht/year anyway, then there's not much downside to putting that money in a Thai bank.

17 hours ago, Inn Between said:

It certainly depends to a large degree on how one chooses to live. I moved there in 2000 and lived in the Pattaya area for about 17 years. Foreign food and restaurants have always been a rip off. I could get a Thai breakfast of fried pork and basil with rice and kai dao for half the cost of a couple of scrambled eggs with toast and coffee, and although it probably cost the same or less to make than the Thai breakfast, the price will be double because it's "Western food". 

 

For someone like me who cooks the vast majority of my own food, has a DIY nature, and doesn't go bars more than once a month or so (to do anything more than people watch with friends and have a couple of beers), 65K could go very far. I don't need anything to be big and fancy. 

But if your lifestyle involves never going out to restaurants, never going to bars, and cooking all your food at home, you could live darn cheap in rural America too and never have a sense that you are missing anything.

My view too. I have a valid will for my UK assets. I believe that I have to make a will here in Thailand for my Thai assets, which means it somehow has to mirror, (both in English and Thai), my UK Will. 
 
My uneasiness surrounds how likely it is that a Lawyer, the police, the Bank or someone else, doesn't manage to purloin the lot instead of it all going to my girlfriend. We are both thinking the same way. Thank you.

46 minutes ago, wwest5829 said:

My approach has been to keep Thailand and the US assets quite separate. My investments are in the US and a US Will and beneficiary designation names my two Sons as heirs. My outlook for Thailand is what comes to Thailand, stays in Thailand. My Thai partner will be designated as sole beneficiary for whatever property and money in the banks I hold upon my death. She is provided for, to the extent I am able and there is no legal entanglements with US.

That's a good approach.  Though via a will you could specify that your sons get your assets in Thailand too, if your estate isn't enormous then it probably isn't worth the trouble.

That is a signal to get up and leave.  If you need ketchup and mustard their food must not taste very good.

 

So stupid ! I guess that you also believe that a family is a Mom and a Dad, that gay should not be allowed to marry and that all drugs should not be legal ?

Not difficult to guess how you are able to think at max.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Dukeleto said:

Where on earth does the report or The Sun article mention any rattle snakes?

 

In a screenshot of a Tweet included in the Sun article.

They could do better than saying that the island doesn't even appear on the map. Sounds like they were marooned on Gilligan's Islands, with headhunters and snakes, until they were rescued by Wongway Feldman and the Ape Boy.