4 minutes ago, The Dark Lord said:

Hi Robby my friend, 

 

we tend to have vastly differing opinions on most everything  hence you rarely see me respond to you. I believe each person is entitled to an opinion and just because it does not fit in with my views it does not make it wrong. This time my friend I fully agree with you. Good post!

We could have a nice debate, I don't care that people have different opinions. That is their good right and it makes for nice discussion. I have often said how you see things is based what you have experienced.. where you are now in life and such things. People who hang out with farmers will be more bias to their views. I hang out more with middle class salary workers and am more bias to their view (yellow). Differences of opinion are all nice as long as they don't turn violent.

 

In an other topic about universal healthcare here i said, why not increase vat with 1% to fund it.. strangely nobody agreed. I think when solutions are there that actually mean they have to pay too they often say no. I don't like paying more taxes, but Thailand has a real small tax base so they can't do much more then what they are doing with the current funds.

 

They would benefit from a non corrupt more efficient tax office too. I am not sure but thought they were going to do more checks on SME companies to get more taxes collected.

5 hours ago, jmccarty said:

Complete the math, it's THB 95/month per old poor person!  A windfall!  They won't miss it if it goes somewhere else in any case. Definitely will buy some nice Italian sports cars for someone though!

I thought I did "complete the math" in my post, stating that it would be under 100B/person/month

4 hours ago, robblok said:

Sure the army should decrease spending, sure the education department should be more efficient (and tons of other examples). But I don't see this happening and in the meanwhile there is no funding. I come from the Netherlands we almost have no army decreased spending on it all the time (and I agree). I would not mind to see a smaller professional army here. But I don't see this happening. 

 

Right now money needs to go to the poor, changes in spending are never popular and almost never happen. So the alternative is do nothing.  In a peferct world id cut army spending in half, clean up the corruption and mismanagement in education so i can spend less on it. Id put that money in healthcare and care for the elderly. However these are plans that would never happen, and in the meantime nothing would change for the elderly. 

 

All we can think about is to expand the tax base right now. 

Army will never decrease in size, spending % of GDP while a military Junta is in power, contrary, the portion of military spending and total baht expenditure will almost certainly increase.... those in power will seek to benefit themselves

9 minutes ago, PhuketAmerican said:

Army will never decrease in size, spending % of GDP while a military Junta is in power, contrary, the portion of military spending and total baht expenditure will almost certainly increase.... those in power will seek to benefit themselves

Correct, that is why i don't see it happening that army spending decreases. That is why this sin tax even if its just a little bit (remember its on top of what is already allocated) is a good thing. As long as the tax is earmarked for the elderly and the normal budget won't be cut (otherwise its like the sin tax is used for something else)