OPINION

Invest, not spend

Re: "BJT to revive co-payment scheme for daily buys", (BP, Sept 7). Prime Minister Anutin Chanvirakul should subsidise investment, not consumption. A key reason for Paetongtarn's downfall was her blind insistence on her B10K/person handout to subsidise consumption, forecasting a fiscal multiplier of 3 to 4.

Instead, her first two tranches flopped spectacularly, with the World Bank issuing a preliminary fiscal multiplier of just 0.4, or a meagre 7–10% of the hoped-for amount.

With an average farm household income of 240,000 baht a year (in 2019), 90% of farm households owing an average of 1.875 years worth of income, and the average farmer being 59 years old, farmers acted rationally and used much of their windfall gain of 10,000 baht a person not to consume but to reduce debt.

Paetongtarn's digital-wallet cash handout programme was another handout to stimulate consumption, not productivity.

But what we desperately need is to upskill, not consume. The World Bank found that 64.7% of Thais aged 15–65 struggled to understand and follow simple medical instructions.

How can we expect much from such a lack of expertise?

Subsidise that which will boost productivity, such as high-yielding seeds, farm machinery or training for a new trade.

A welcoming place

Re: "Fist bumps of hatred", (PostBag, Sept 7).

In response to Joseph Ting, as an Australian I express regret at what he has experienced in Australia due to his ethnicity.

There will always be a minority in a society with views which differ from the mainstream and it is unacceptable that the expression of those views should involve violence in any way.

It should be noted that Joseph makes up one of the 31.5% or 8.6 million Australians who were born overseas.

As an ethnic Asian, Joseph is one of 12% or 3.25 million people from Asia, one of 4.2% or 1.15 million from Southeast Asia and specifically one of around 185,000 from Malaysia.

Joseph is therefore a member of a very large cohort of migrants and while still being a minority, it is a sizeable minority.

When migrants with at least one parent born overseas are included, this accounts for 50% of Australians. Only New Zealand and Canada are similar.

Australians marched to protest mass immigration. Since Covid, migrant arrivals are around 500,000 a year. In a population of only 27 million latest wave of immigrants is overwhelming especially when there is a severe housing shortage, cost of living pressures and infrastructure and services are struggling to keep up with increased demand.

Australians want the number of migrants to fall lower and ideally, to be more culturally diverse to promote assimilation with existing Australian culture and values.

To paint Australia as a racist country as Joseph has done is unfair. Based on the above figures, and as the peaceful protests which migrants also attended demonstrated, the majority of Australians are not racist.

It is a fact that wherever one chooses to live, there will be people who prefer that you did not join them.

Most foreigners living in Thailand are aware that not every Thai welcomes them. Like Australia though, that group is a minority, and it is their right to hold and even peacefully express that view.