mfd101

Age and wisdom aren't necessarily close partners.

Always fascinating to encounter the American anti-social concept of 'freedom'. Not to mention the peculiar association of the colour red with the political right, and blue with the political left. The great Usofan republic leading the world ... Meanwhile back in the real world ... In Oz the current advice I saw 3 or 4 weeks ago was that the new round of viruses was highly infectious but likely less nasty than the Omicron round. And on the basis that most people (in Oz) have now reasonable levels of resistance to covid (because of previous infection +/or vaccines) people should wait 3 or 4 or 6 months before getting the latest round of all-inclusive vaccines still being readied for distribution. (Which probably means we won't see the latest vaccines here in Thailand till some time next year).

Good luck with that. Government subsidies merely distort the market (both supply & demand) and 'benefit' (in the short term) the rich as well as the poor. They also distort or kill the evolution to alternative means of transport (eg in Thailand's case, decent railways both inter- and intra-city).

We shall see.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Perhaps I should have said: 'Would be lovely to have a usable one in Surin'.

Yes, but was Defence 'under civilian control' in her time?

Would be lovely to have one in Surin! (instead of having to drive for an hour to get to Buriram airport) ...

Sitting still is bad for you. Your body was made for movement, swinging through the trees. You should get up and move around every 30 minutes. Staring at a screen is bad for your eyes. You need to exercise your eyes for a few seconds every 5 minutes, looking sideways 'out of the corner' of your eyes, & looking at objects further away from you than your screen (ie refocussing).

(Yawn)

Interesting. Keeping Defence under civilian control will be a new experience for Thailand ...

At least in the shortish term - say, to May next year - he's in a position to stare down his internal opposition and get his own way. The dinosaurs are still licking their wounds. Propaganda-wise he looks good in all the photos & vids. Towering over everyone else, a useful symbolism when you're in politics.

No problems ordering up a transfer from Aus to Thailand this morning. Scheduled for arrival at 1400 tomorrow as usual.

It's their accepting an endless stream of unpalatable facts since forever that has made Thailand what it is - a byword for feudal hierarchy, poverty and corruption!

Yes, the mega-rich could certainly do with being taken down a peg or 3. As to the minimum wage (as Australia is rediscovering under a Labor Government), increasing wages without first increasing productivity through technology & education simply produces runaway inflation. Podactif wot dat?

Notice that the first report above (from Thai PBS) says he'll think about it. The second report above (from something in Phuket) says he's doing it ... No suggestion (so far) of doing anything for expats.

As to the 10K payment (assuming it actually materializes), here in Isaan the people will accept it Tank yo wery mut, and then vote MFP in even larger numbers at the next election. They may be poor peasants and uneducated but they're not entirely stupid.

Yes, and many of the young federal bureaucrats who worked for me in Canberra had swarthy skins and difficult to pronounce surnames, but they had been born in Oz and spoke broad Australian. Often very talented young people and a pleasure to work with.

My comment was meant quantitatively rather than qualitatively.

Not sure how that helps. My point is that expats here invariably overestimate their own importance in the scheme of things.

Rubbish. Old Falangs are nothing but a pimple on the backside of Thailand.

Well, whether you approve or not, the world's population will be declining steadily after the middle of this century. And no doubt panic will set in, the opposite kind from what we currently have. We love panics. Without them journalists & politicians would have little to do.

Life expectancy figures are nearly always based on expectancy at birth. But most of the large increase in 'life expectancy' in Western countries over the last 120 years came from the virtual elimination of child mortality. Which means that, if you were to take the figures for life expectancy at, say, age 10 or 15 or even 20, the improvement over the last 120 years would be nowhere near as great as is usually quoted. There have always been people who lived to a ripe old age (Thomas Hobbes was one: 1588-1679). Just not many of them.

Yes, I entirely agree. When politicians intervene in this area, they have no idea what they're doing or what the longterm effects will be. The only counter-example to that that I can think of MIGHT be Singapore ... but it's so small & so competently governed in autocratic style that it probably doesn't have too many lessons to give the rest of the world.

Issues with Wise seem to vary from 1 country to another, mostly I suspect because each country has a different set of security requirements. I use Wise to transfer from Australia to Thailand. Since we fixed the 'reason for transfer' issue in relation to Thailand several years ago, I've never had a problem. Occasionally they take an extra 24 hours for the transfer to arrive, presumably because of security checking.

Yes, and by donating younger people to the older receiver countries, they don't just help the inverted pyramid in the receiver countries, they reduce the huge pyramid in their countries of origin where, characteristically, babies per woman are still around 3 and only slowly edging down to the magic crossover number of 2.1. The problem with all of that is that migrants tend to be the better educated, get-up-and-go (literally) individuals & families. People with energy, whom the donor country can't really afford to lose. The one thing that follows from all of this is that, when it comes to demographics, it's pointless taking a short-term view of things (say, next 5 or 10 years). What will happen in 5 or 10 years, in every country, is largely already decided by the decisions people have already made and acted upon re baby-production. We know for instance how many babies were born last year in country X. We can therefore predict, taking life expectancy stats into account, how many young males will be on the streets in say 16-24 years, and therefore what levels of street crime are likely to be. We can predict what the levels of demand for education from primary to secondary to tertiary will be over the next 20+ years ... And so on. And no country (not even Nth Korea) misses out on all of this.