Thailand’s poor continue to suffer as economy fails to deliver while cost of living rises

[billd766]

2 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

He doesn't get it that many of those unemployed worked in the tourist industry, and he believes tourism is a drop in the bucket. 4 hotels, large ones near me here in BKK closed over 2 years ago and all lost there jobs. Hard to work in a hotel when it's closed and others have reduced staff.  Had friends close there businesses because of a lack of customers and the rents could not be met.....we adopted 4 families whose store fronts closed and have been helping them......they just recently started back up but are struggling.....

Out here in rural Kamphaeng Phet, a few shops have closed (though one was the vet) but at least 3 small resorts and a few small restaurants have closed through lack of customers. The one factory is just working 8 till 5 with no overtime and less staff.

 

A lot of the pop up roadside eateries have popped down now but at least they were not paying rent. My wife closed her noodle stall after 5 days of absolutely no customers.

[BangkokReady]

3 hours ago, SteveBull said:

As for the govt to help, the irony is amazing, here they get next to nothing from the thai govt

One way the government could help would be to have decent education to help Thai people manage their finances and be less vulnerable to predatory lenders.

[Adumbration]

2 hours ago, kickstart said:

Can we have the link to that quote ,takes some believing.

 

The link is the article at the start of this thread.  It states 70% of all people with loans have missed a payment.  And of course that statistic will not be accurate, nor anywhere near the actually truth because TIT.

[Adumbration]

3 hours ago, SteveBull said:

How many have gone broke ? - a quick google search tells me they are sat on 26 TRILLION baht. The Thai Baht is bulletproof due to the sheer amount of dollars they hold (higher than Germany or the UK and second only to the big hitters, such as China, US, Saudi etc)

 

Sleep well.

 

 

I will, well at least up until China moves on Taiwan.

[spidermike007]

No question unemployment is way, way up, the economy is in the toilet, and the policies have failed miserably. Whether or not the tourism sabotage was deliberate is questionable, but a question worth asking. A bit of a neocon type agenda? Destroy the industry, reduce it to rubble, get rid of the nightlife and the industry, and rebuilt it from scratch, in the image of great purity of the "noble ones". Quite a diabolical possibility. 

 

With the average income at $575 monthly, according to the world bank, it has to be tough to get by. And that was before the Prayuth Decimation. 
 

[Rampant Rabbit]

10 hours ago, billd766 said:

Especially all those lazy people who used to work in the decimated tourist industry, whose jobs were lost and destroyed by the current government.

 

You know the ones. The girls that worked in the bars, the businesses who supplied the alcohol, soda and soft drinks, the people who used to deliver it, the people who used to work supplying food, the security staff, the car parkers, the guest houses and the small hotels, the shops that used to sell to tourists, the taxi, motosai and tuk tuk drivers etc. The bar, guest house and small hotel owners.

 

My bitter sarcasm and rant is over for a while.

As stated  "adapt or  die"  .if you can only do one job u may as  well. All  thos e metnioned by  you  could easily  work on the land where there is a huge  demand for workers. Is  it  better to have no job and whine about it  with no  money or a  job  possibly  with less  money but some dignity. Theyre  lazy simple as that.

Have you  any experience of finding someone to work  on the land..even as a  caretaker where a lot  of  downtime is  normal?

MY one lad gets 15k a  house ,electric, water, food,  fish, motorbike 2  hours for  lunch. 7-11 then 2-5 he does the work with ease with 3  fingers  missing.

His salary rise to 16k end of this  year, rural  location............meanwhile Thais  all round whinge and  moan they have no work , our neighbours with land also say the same.cant find  any staff amongst all those  unemployed, the going  rate is 500 a  day.

What they want is to be a  security guard so they can sleep  all  night for 12 k. Thats the reality. 

Even had a  cleaner once years  ago, took her 4  hours to clean my  house 50m2, I do it myself in 1  hour, thats another story entirely  though....time and motion.

What I do see now is everyone and his friend opening a roadside  stall  selling food, mostly junk food for the remaining farm workers /construction crews, most of them  overweight, another  job where they barely get any income and can sit down all day, theyd  rather do that than get a  d ecent regular higher  income.

[hotchilli]

21 hours ago, webfact said:

The UTCC’s survey showed that household with monthly income of 50,000 Baht had debts of more than 500,000 Baht and most of those debts were in the personal loan and credit card loan, with these loans/credit card spending mostly used for buying consumer goods and/or durable goods.

50,000 baht per month means even a family could live comfortably, 500,000 debt means they are trying to live way beyond their means and banks are happy to fund them.

Most are trying to live on half that figure, and many on less than half of that again.

The only thing that failed to deliver is Prayut & Co.
 

[ThailandRyan]

2 hours ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

As stated  "adapt or  die"  .if you can only do one job u may as  well. All  thos e metnioned by  you  could easily  work on the land where there is a huge  demand for workers. Is  it  better to have no job and whine about it  with no  money or a  job  possibly  with less  money but some dignity. Theyre  lazy simple as that.

Have you  any experience of finding someone to work  on the land..even as a  caretaker where a lot  of  downtime is  normal?

MY one lad gets 15k a  house ,electric, water, food,  fish, motorbike 2  hours for  lunch. 7-11 then 2-5 he does the work with ease with 3  fingers  missing.

His salary rise to 16k end of this  year, rural  location............meanwhile Thais  all round whinge and  moan they have no work , our neighbours with land also say the same.cant find  any staff amongst all those  unemployed, the going  rate is 500 a  day.

What they want is to be a  security guard so they can sleep  all  night for 12 k. Thats the reality. 

Even had a  cleaner once years  ago, took her 4  hours to clean my  house 50m2, I do it myself in 1  hour, thats another story entirely  though....time and motion.

What I do see now is everyone and his friend opening a roadside  stall  selling food, mostly junk food for the remaining farm workers /construction crews, most of them  overweight, another  job where they barely get any income and can sit down all day, theyd  rather do that than get a  d ecent regular higher  income.

So it is a personal servant and groundskeeper you are bellowing about that are hard to find.  That has always been and always will be a problem sir.  Finding staff for a company is also a stiff one in finding ones that will fit in.  I hired a Thai housekeeper 3 years ago and after 3 months let her go as she would not do what was expected, I did not whine about it like you are, instead I hired an older lady from Myanmar whose family had worked with my GF's family.  I pay her 20k a month, and that includes her room and board, so she is well paid.  The woman starts cleaning at 6 am, and has always gone above and beyond what is needed.  She is given from Saturday night at 6pm to Monday morning at 6am as her time off each week to spend with her family. The only issue I ever had with hiring a non-Thai was having to hire an agent to do the proper paperwork to list me as the employer and list her as my employee, something you do not need to do when hiring a Thai.  We all have our crosses to bare, but finding good help has been the norm across all industries.

[Rampant Rabbit]

51 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

So it is a personal servant and groundskeeper you are bellowing about that are hard to find.  That has always been and always will be a problem sir.  Finding staff for a company is also a stiff one in finding ones that will fit in.  I hired a Thai housekeeper 3 years ago and after 3 months let her go as she would not do what was expected, I did not whine about it like you are, instead I hired an older lady from Myanmar whose family had worked with my GF's family.  I pay her 20k a month, and that includes her room and board, so she is well paid.  The woman starts cleaning at 6 am, and has always gone above and beyond what is needed.  She is given from Saturday night at 6pm to Monday morning at 6am as her time off each week to spend with her family. The only issue I ever had with hiring a non-Thai was having to hire an agent to do the proper paperwork to list me as the employer and list her as my employee, something you do not need to do when hiring a Thai.  We all have our crosses to bare, but finding good help has been the norm across all industries.

"bellowing eh"  I  believe BELLOWING looks  like this........however, there is WORK available and you seem to be changing the subject now from no work available, my  point, if  i  need  to explain it is many dont want any work they want EASY (bellowing) work........when theres  no work  whats the better choice..no work  no  money, I resent the word "servant" my kid aint a  servant he can leave anytime he wants.

Here's the "servant" being subdued in Hua  Hin couple weeks ago where  we  go for a weekly trip out....... now  lick my boots  clean boy..a  phrase he always loves to hear from the master.

[Gknrd]

Pretty sad IMO.. But, Thailand will have it better than most countries in the region in the next few years. Just being able to feed themselves will be huge in the next few years.

[SteveBull]

12 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

One way the government could help would be to have decent education to help Thai people manage their finances and be less vulnerable to predatory lenders.

Yep agreed  - Thailand seems to produce incredible engineers/architects etc all skills that can benefit Thailand and then go out of their way to keep those skills within, and I've seen the maths and physics stuff they give to 14 year olds and it would blow your mind, it's easily UK A level stuff if not more, yet the overall common sense factor and depressingly the woeful lack of awareness of the world outside Thailand, Geography and History etc is so poor. Infact when I was researching schools for my daughter, I don't think I even saw a school with Geography on their curriculum.

 

So currently my daughter is days away from splitting the atom but can't give me 3 European capitals !!

[SteveBull]

11 hours ago, Adumbration said:

I will, well at least up until China moves on Taiwan.

I'm here to counsel you again ???? - China has seen the devastation sanctions have delivered to Russia, (though sadly not enough), if you were the Chinese PM, fond of your position, and are about to see your Russian counterpart taken out, and knew the economic consequences, would you invade ?

 

OK try melatonin ????

 

(I've no idea why that switched to block writing?)

[superal]

14 hours ago, SteveBull said:

How many have gone broke ? - a quick google search tells me they are sat on 26 TRILLION baht. The Thai Baht is bulletproof due to the sheer amount of dollars they hold (higher than Germany or the UK and second only to the big hitters, such as China, US, Saudi etc)

 

Sleep well.

 

 

Yes it is true that Thailand has huge foreign reserves but mostly in the USA dollar currency . I have read recently that paper money is not the way to go as opposed to tangibles e.g. gold , oil reserves , real estate and land . The world seems to depend on the American dollar, come what may but right now there is concern that the federal bank will put up interest rates to try to halt or lessen their imminent inflation . Some have said that the American balloon is about to burst . So if Thailand relies on the U.S. dollar , as its main source of foreign reserves , there could be a weakening of the baht that would exacerbate the problems of Thailand's poorest folk and desperate people do desperate things of course . The Thai government must take care of its low paid folks by introducing a welfare scheme rather than spend money on submarines or conscription's etc . 

[starky]

23 hours ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

Plenty of  work about, theyre  too  lazy to do it...hence Burmese and Cambodians..who they threw  out and also brought in ridiculous regitsration process to employ them with crazy fines for employers.... They borrow  money for stuff they dont need, show me a Thai without a phone or  motorbike.....try again

Yes ridiculous things like communication or transport certainly things people like them don't require. They should just walk everywhere and only use one of the many public telephones.

[SteveBull]

21 minutes ago, superal said:

Yes it is true that Thailand has huge foreign reserves but mostly in the USA dollar currency . I have read recently that paper money is not the way to go as opposed to tangibles e.g. gold , oil reserves , real estate and land . The world seems to depend on the American dollar, come what may but right now there is concern that the federal bank will put up interest rates to try to halt or lessen their imminent inflation . Some have said that the American balloon is about to burst . So if Thailand relies on the U.S. dollar , as its main source of foreign reserves , there could be a weakening of the baht that would exacerbate the problems of Thailand's poorest folk and desperate people do desperate things of course . The Thai government must take care of its low paid folks by introducing a welfare scheme rather than spend money on submarines or conscription's etc . 

All foreign reserves are US dollars, many many countries wish that wasn't so but it won't be changing in our lifetimes. Cryptos are an example of an assault on the dollar, but if it got even close to competing then the US would just regulate it out of existence. 

 

Don't gamble on balloons bursting, the FED are being overly cautious imo, and some believe the inflation peak can already be seen, UK inflation which is already in double figures is predicted to be sub 2% end 2023, though a fair bit of pain to come between now and then.

 

However yes your last paragraph we totally agree on, last time I looked Thailand were about 7th on the planet in terms of dollar reserves, an incredible position when you see some of the huge economies beneath them, so it is a shame to put it mildly, there's not more help for the folk down on their luck.

 

NB Thailand now in 15th place but still ahead of the UK (17th)

[Iamfalang]

Once a week for about six years (perhaps I didn't do it as much during the big COVID scare), I'll buy a Thai their lunch.   It's never more than 50 baht, and I know it helps them way more than it helps me.

 

Many of these people are very, very poor.  Business owners who work everyday and have less than 10,000 baht to their name.   

 

20-50 baht a week is a great start.   If you are old, you understand it's important to give.

 

If you have no desire to give, only to take, then you are what we call a "lost soul."  

[Rampant Rabbit]

1 hour ago, starky said:

Yes ridiculous things like communication or transport certainly things people like them don't require. They should just walk everywhere and only use one of the many public telephones.

Cant  afford  it , dont  buy it,  bicycles are cheap, Thai way  borrow  more than you  earn then fail to make  payments yet they all seem to be sporting more expensive phones when a dumb phone  is cheap. You dont need a  phone to work in the fields where  there are many jobs available. Field workers get transported  usually by  pick up from the boss man. 

Jobs  are theere Thais dont want them.

[ThailandRyan]

11 minutes ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

Cant  afford  it , dont  buy it,  bicycles are cheap, Thai way  borrow  more than you  earn then fail to make  payments yet they all seem to be sporting more expensive phones when a dumb phone  is cheap. You dont need a  phone to work in the fields where  there are many jobs available. Field workers get transported  usually by  pick up from the boss man. 

Jobs  are theere Thais dont want them.

Another degrading post advocating for Thai's to go work the fields and not buy things that keep them connected to society or give them the ability to see things other than riding a bicycle....you sir are a true peach.  Again saying Thais don't want jobs, what they do not want is to work what they feel are degrading menial jobs meant for those that live beneath others.  It is not a caste system here, and people want to move up if they can. Yes debt does play a part in life, not all are born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

[mommysboy]

20 hours ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

So they can ONLY work in tourism can they.........adapt  or  die...try again

Adapt to what exactly?

[metisdead]

Some off topic posts and replies have been removed.

[Rampant Rabbit]

3 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

Another degrading post advocating for Thai's to go work the fields and not buy things that keep them connected to society or give them the ability to see things other than riding a bicycle....you sir are a true peach.  Again saying Thais don't want jobs, what they do not want is to work what they feel are degrading menial jobs meant for those that live beneath others.  It is not a caste system here, and people want to move up if they can. Yes debt does play a part in life, not all are born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

Yeah whats more degrading having no  job with  no  money or  having a  job with  money. Get  off  your  moral high  horse  Mr saviour of the "poor"

[Rampant Rabbit]

1 hour ago, mommysboy said:

Adapt to what exactly?

The other posters  stated they  seem only to be able  to work in tourist industyr  jobs....so they should  adapt  to work on the land instead if  no other work's available.instead  all  I hear is whinging that  they are  poor and got  no work. The works  there they just dont want it.

[Ralf001]

On 8/26/2022 at 10:54 AM, ThailandRyan said:

Self inflicted how? Was it because they had to continue to try and live without jobs or working for the past 2 years with the country closed...try again.

Were I work we need 50 positions to fill.

We pay double award wage with generous conditions on top but very few takers.

Had 15 start on Monday gone.... Tuesday only 3 of them showed up.

[BonMot]

555

 

Old news. Read it ON Thai Enquirer a day or two ago.

 

The disturbing take away for me is all the impoverished people given credit (cards) with zero financial accumen whatsoever.

 

The banks should be forced to cut the rates to 3% and work with the indigent borrowers or forgive the loans altogether.

 

The bankruptcy laws in this country are mercenary

[BonMot]

4 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

Another degrading post advocating for Thai's to go work the fields and not buy things that keep them connected to society or give them the ability to see things other than riding a bicycle....you sir are a true peach.  Again saying Thais don't want jobs, what they do not want is to work what they feel are degrading menial jobs meant for those that live beneath others.  It is not a caste system here, and people want to move up if they can. Yes debt does play a part in life, not all are born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

So.... You're buying everyone iPhones? How generous of you.

[BonMot]

8 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

Were I work we need 50 positions to fill.

We pay double award wage with generous conditions on top but very few takers.

Had 15 start on Monday gone.... Tuesday only 3 of them showed up.

What's the work? Genuinely interested.

[Ralf001]

2 minutes ago, BonMot said:

What's the work? Genuinely interested.

Metal fabrication for export.

[3NUMBAS]

they dont have the heating bills of brits and krauts that will break the bank this winter ,savings will be gone

[BonMot]

4 hours ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

Cant  afford  it , dont  buy it, 

Many derisive posts countering this.

 

I fully agree. Looking back in my life... I totally scrimped and saved to pay for university, to shove every penny I could into my 401k plan... Owned one new car in my entire life (had some rockin' classics) before I left states for good at 42.

 

Financial security means hard sacrifice.

 

I've great empathy for this lot of borrowers.

[BonMot]

7 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

Metal fabrication for export.

That's gritty work but I had workshop in G8 or M2.

 

I truly admire the hand rails on the MRT bogeys the welding and fabrication is beautiful.

 

Their loss.

 

Are you in Bangkok? My bil does stainlessness work on family restaurant tables. Nice