Third World In Whose Eyes?

[Prakanong]

Also, ColPyat, by being an average Thai, I mean I regularly eat food from street vendors and stuff.

Thaksin liked the street vendor food too ;-)

[ColPyat]

"In most developed countries food does not eat up such a large proportion of the available income as it does in Thailand even though more expensive. That is why it is comparatively more expensive here."

I would like to know the proportion of the average income a Thai spends on food - I have no clue

I weas recently reading that in the UK though the % of the average income spent on food has fallen dramatically - if i remember correctly form 50%+ to circa 33% - i may be wrong on the %'s but i know it has fallen a lot

I think the source may have been "The Undercover Economist"

My educated guess, based on many friends lives, is about 30% to 50% for average wage labors in the cities. This is low quality food, the cheapest available.

This is very high, if you add the additional cost of other necessities, such as costs for sending children to school, sending money home for parents and grandparents, etc.

[ColPyat]

Also, ColPyat, by being an average Thai, I mean I regularly eat food from street vendors. And the data regarding the number of the poor in Thailand I refered to was from the UN file I posted. It shows that the number has been declining since 1988.

My personal guess though is (i might of course be wrong there), that it was not much of a problem for your parents to give you 100 Baht pocket money a day when you still went to school. Unfortunately for the average family here that is not possible.

I am always a bit skeptical with those poverty statistics. There are just so many factors involved, most of which i do not understand.

When i compare with personal experience, that before the crises, food was about a third in the markets of what it is today, and income has not risen significantly in that period, then common sense tells me that life is a lot more difficult for the ones on an average labor's salary. This is also true for the many friends i have who are on such salaries - their life has become more difficult in that period.

In addition to that, many people who have survived on seasonal agricultural labor before, find it it more difficult to do so now as much of that seasonal labor has been replaced by machines, such as in the sugar cane industry. But these people still cannot get their own land.

[canuckamuck]

When i compare with personal experience, that before the crises, food was about a third in the markets of what it is today, and income has not risen significantly in that period, then common sense tells me that life is a lot more difficult for the ones on an average labor's salary. This is also true for the many friends i have who are on such salaries - their life has become more difficult in that period.

In addition to that, many people who have survived on seasonal agricultural labor before, find it it more difficult to do so now as much of that seasonal labor has been replaced by machines, such as in the sugar cane industry. But these people still cannot get their own land.

You're comparing food you buy for you with a cost of living increase for mostly agricultural communities. If you spent some time in such a place, you would see they cook their own food, as street vendors are mostly found near streets.

I can’t comment on how much food has gone up here in the last 10 years, but I know the cost of raising a chicken and picking a handful of pahk boom is likely similar to what is was. Rice likely doesn't change much either. Plus, I really don’t see this influx of machines out there, other than a thresher at the end of the field, and a 1 or 2 cylinder truck or plow to haul away the goods.

The plow only replaced the buffalos, they never complained once.

[cdnvic]

20 Baht dishes at food stalls use lowest quality rice, veggies, meat and oil.

Still tastes bloody good

[ColPyat]

You're comparing food you buy for you with a cost of living increase for mostly agricultural communities. If you spent some time in such a place, you would see they cook their own food, as street vendors are mostly found near streets.

I can’t comment on how much food has gone up here in the last 10 years, but I know the cost of raising a chicken and picking a handful of pahk boom is likely similar to what is was. Rice likely doesn't change much either. Plus, I really don’t see this influx of machines out there, other than a thresher at the end of the field, and a 1 or 2 cylinder truck or plow to haul away the goods.

The plow only replaced the buffalos, they never complained once.

Read my posts again please. I have made a post on food in poor agricultural communities, post #173, page 12. And yes, i have spent considerable time in such a community, namely my wife's community, where i have financed and built up from scratch a subsistence farm.

I have also lived for more than two years in a village near Bangkok that previously survived mostly from fruit orchards. This once thriving Klong community now is in shambles since no government has helped significantly with the floods.

Most young people have moved away to work in the factories, orchards have returned to jungle.

My wifes family has previously mostly survived by wage labor during the sugarcane season. One of the reasons i had to built up that farm was because they could not make enough money anymore to survive because most labor was replaced by machines.

[canuckamuck]

My wifes family has previously mostly survived by wage labor during the sugarcane season. One of the reasons i had to built up that farm was because they could not make enough money anymore to survive because most labor was replaced by machines.

Now I guess I am really splitting hairs, but I don’t get how getting paid to work a sugar cane field is not wage labor. Also you can’t really live eating only sugar cane so it is mostly a labor providing job. The young people moving to the factories is something that is happening across the globe. Industrialization is providing a better income for a few.

Yes it is a shame the orchards are disappearing, but supply and demand is a big factor. Many such things are happening if different regions of the world. I just came back from an area of Nepal where the villagers grow mostly Marijuana and their kids are starving to death. That is a poverty mentality. They make more money with ganga, but the cost is unthinkable. When I think of the third world, that is the image in my mind.

[ColPyat]

My wifes family has previously mostly survived by wage labor during the sugarcane season. One of the reasons i had to built up that farm was because they could not make enough money anymore to survive because most labor was replaced by machines.

Now I guess I am really splitting hairs, but I don’t get how getting paid to work a sugar cane field is not wage labor. Also you can’t really live eating only sugar cane so it is mostly a labor providing job. The young people moving to the factories is something that is happening across the globe. Industrialization is providing a better income for a few.

Yes it is a shame the orchards are disappearing, but supply and demand is a big factor. Many such things are happening if different regions of the world. I just came back from an area of Nepal where the villagers grow mostly Marijuana and their kids are starving to death. That is a poverty mentality. They make more money with ganga, but the cost is unthinkable. When I think of the third world, that is the image in my mind.

I think you misunderstood me.

My wifes family was paid as agricultural wage labors during the sugarcane harvest, and survived from that income. About ten years ago most sugarcane growers started using machines, so that there was less need for wage labors, and my wifes's family could not survive anymore. They were not qualified enough to get decent factory jobs in the cities, and increasingly their situation became desperate. Is that clearer now?

The problems of the orchards i described is not "supply" and "demand", but that the government has used every year the Klongs to run off for flood waters to protect Bangkok, and has neither compensated, nor helped protecting the farmers against the floods. The people had no choice other than giving up their orchards, due to government mismanagement. They did like their orchards, and the great lifestyle, and lived well from their income.

You can come up again and again with examples of the poorest countries on earth. Yes, i know that Nepal is poorer than Thailand. I have been there.

But your view on Thailand is a bit rose colored, as your posts have shown. You can't just talk away Thailand's tremendous problems by arguments like your mistaken ideas about personal freedom here, or how happy you are here.

Also Nepal had a huge and very happy expat community before the war, even though Nepal is one of the poorest countries on earth.

Yes, i know that there are many countries with far more problems than Thailand, you don't need to point that out to me again. I know that. In two decades living, working and traveling in Asia i have seen many of them, and have spent considerable amount of time in them.

Thailand is living far below its potential, if you compare it with the far more advanced Malaysia, for example. Malaysia a few decades ago was below Thailand. Thailand's future looks not very good presently, but you do ignore facts such as a very high crime rate, a very ugly insurgency, political problems, income distribution problems, and the complete lack of feasible solutions for all those.

Edited April 11, 2007 by ColPyat

[canuckamuck]

Ok I get your points about your wife’s family’s troubles. I do sympathize, as a kid I lived through a family farm bankruptcy as well. Of course we have a social safety net in Canada, so I hardly suffered the way someone would here.

Thailand is definitely living below its potential. I have pointed that out many times. My point was, and remains: Thailand has got advantages. If you want to sound objective you have to give a little ground and resist being derogatory. It is racism under cover. That’s why Thai Goon is all hot about this, the posters out there a dumping all over his heritage, his nation. Basically he wants to smash someone in the chops, just like you would if someone cursed your mom or your sister.

Now ColPyat: I don’t think this applies to you, I probably agree with your entire argument. You just happen to be the guy in the debate at the moment.

Rose colored views aren’t so bad by the way; it is much nicer than the shade of brown I see around here.

[ColPyat]

Ok I get your points about your wife’s family’s troubles. I do sympathize, as a kid I lived through a family farm bankruptcy as well. Of course we have a social safety net in Canada, so I hardly suffered the way someone would here.

Thailand is definitely living below its potential. I have pointed that out many times. My point was, and remains: Thailand has got advantages. If you want to sound objective you have to give a little ground and resist being derogatory. It is racism under cover. That’s why Thai Goon is all hot about this, the posters out there a dumping all over his heritage, his nation. Basically he wants to smash someone in the chops, just like you would if someone cursed your mom or your sister.

Now ColPyat: I don’t think this applies to you, I probably agree with your entire argument. You just happen to be the guy in the debate at the moment.

Rose colored views aren’t so bad by the way; it is much nicer than the shade of brown I see around here.

No, you still do not get the point. This was not a farm bankruptcy. This is the result of decades of mismanaging Thailand, of no government being able to improve some of the utter injustices that are far too prevalent here in Thailand.

The farm bankruptcy was another ten years before that, when somebody high and might decided that the location the family (and many others in the village) had the last bit of own land is to be a forest reserve, though conveniently ignoring that a hill covered in prime forest nearby was used by a quarry (and not existing anymore, the next hill is now nearly gone). Needless to say that against the decision of that high and mighty person was no argument possible, and neither were reparations, in money or land, offered. And believe me - these sort of decisions happen still happen in Thailand, though for obvious reasons cannot be reported about.

This is a system which reminds one strongly of "third world", even though, i point out again, the whole of Thailand cannot be called what we would consider "third world".

I may be the guy in the debate here, but thanks, please do not confuse me as another barstool whinger. I believe you don't do that. Yes, i understand that Thaigoon gets angry when confronted with many idiotic statements here which often stink of racism. I do so as well.

But i think that Thaigoon looks at his country from a slightly myopic view of somebody who never had to suffer from the injustices far too many Thais have to suffer every day, and is also still rather young and idealistic.

[canuckamuck]

ColPyat my sympathies were for your family personally, not a point in the debate. Government decisions in Thailand frequently discount logic; this is where the underperformance is rooted. Yes this is a third world characteristic. It is also the point where progress is faintly possible. At least it isn’t a lack of resources or invading armies that make progress unattainable. It should be our focus to keep presenting logical solutions, one day someone might just take the bait. We can’t vote, but we can communicate.

No bar stool whinger are you, and that was also my point. And Thaigoon’s zealous approach reflects the fact he is outnumbered here, it’s tough to battle so many at once. I respect his diligence. It’s an honor to sit on his side, although sometimes we also disagree.