Money money money, makes Thailand go round

Posted by admin on January 15th, 2008 filed in living here

All credit to the Thai, they really are a very enterprising nation. Economists will give you all sorts of reasons why Thailand was the fastest growing economy for nearly a decade through the eighties but what it boils down to is the modern Thai nature of wanting to get rich. This is nothing new however, for Thai society is heavily based on status and everyone in Thailand strives to climb up this complex hierarchal ladder by whatever means they can. 

 

Particularly for the emerging middle-class, your place and the respect you get from your wealth is very important. Hence, we have a country where getting wealthy usually comes first, second and third in most people’s ambitions. If you can get there by cheating or taking shortcuts then all the better. This is what drives average people here to work 10 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week and hold down several jobs and have a number of ‘schemes’ on the go all at once. 

 

In fact, it’s probably very much a ‘Chinese trait’ – brought to the country at the turn of the century onwards during the great Chinese diaspora. Indeed, it’s the Chinese descendents in today’s Thailand that control the money. They continue to follow distinct Chinese customs – especially in business – and retain their roots through insular inter-marriage. Although assimilated entirely as Thais, this group number about 10 per cent of the population but control the majority share of the country’s wealth. And Thailand as a whole admiringly follow their example. Consideration for everything else, such as conscience and ethics, environmental responsibility and the like often come a distant second.

 

Of course, in a country where laws and regulations are easily subverted by money, wealth means power, and so it is that the nation as a whole sees enrichment as the primary objective. They will forego holidays, leisure and personal improvement time, along with the usual self centred comforts which are common in West, just to bulk out their bank accounts and acquire material possessions in order to gain respect. It is common to find people driving cars which are worth more than their house, or wearing jewellery which costs more than their kids education. Volvos, miniature mobile phones, fat gold chains, imported designer home appliances, large screen plasma TVs, Black label whiskey -  these are all essential marquees of status and often go beyond comprehension in their poor judgement of value-for-money.  

 

Despite this, at the bottom of the ladder there are plenty of humble working class Thai from a fading era, who are content with their piece of land and ‘sabai sabai’ (relaxed) lifestyle. They will happily sit at a market all day watching a portable TV and waiting patiently for the odd customer to drift by. They don’t share the same ambition as their cosmopolitan city cousins who have driven Thailand forward so relentlessly over the past twenty years, yet ask them if they would rather be dripping in gold and move on from their friendly but poor neighbourhood and they wouldn’t hesitate. Well, who wouldn’t, but here in Thailand there is no middle ground. Everyone wants to be richer than they already are. The middle class in Thailand enjoy a lifestyle that is perhaps more comfortable than your average European yet they still feel poor and wish for more. And so they go out and work harder. 

 

Thailand has an unemployment rate of less than 5 per cent. It’s economy continues to grow at 6 per cent, despite the cooling off after the ’97 financial crash. Hugely ambitious investment projects are seen everywhere, the country boasts some of the world’s richest people and has (at last count in 2003) over 200,000 US dollar millionaires despite the average annual salary being less than $2500. The Thai may not be scientific innovators and have a tendency to copy everyone elses ideas, nor are they very fiscally responsible with the economy but they plunge headlong into commerce and enjoy it. Their marketing and business methods may seem a little unsophisticated by Western standards and perhaps lacking in ethics, but the balance sheet looks healthy and more and more people - the country as a whole - gets richer by the day. And compared to the previous generation, they are infinitely better off.

 

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