OPINION

A tax on the poor

The recent figures quoted to justify the new Tax Saving Funds clearly demonstrate who this is intended for, if you take a moment to process the numbers.

To benefit fully from this scheme, a person must make 830,000 baht a year. How many people actually make this much? Especially in an economy that fights against raising the minimum wage every time it is pressured to entertain such a notion.

The cap of benefits at 250,000 baht is double what labourers make working every single day, at 350 baht/day.

How can the vast majority of the population, which is struggling just to survive, see this "tax-saving" scheme as a mechanism that will make them fiscally sound and help to provide for their personal economic well-being? Since this cannot be helpful to the majority, it must be benefiting someone.

THAI truly amazing

Re: "THAI reports B10.9bn net loss for Jan-Sept", (BP, Nov 15) & "Creative accounting", (PostBag, Nov 15).

I now feel quite the gullible fool for merely being amazed two days ago that THAI, the national disgrace, was predicting a loss of a "mere" 2.2 billion baht this year. Generously respecting the venerable traditions of Thainess, that earlier claim a full two days ago was presumably one of those amazing "honest mistakes" so valued by conservative Thai tradition that must be rigorously protected by coups, against the threat of transparency, honesty or other forms of good governance.

If the THAI white elephant's loss for January to September is now running at an even more amazing 10.9 billion baht, what might it be next week? And the week after that? And come New Year's Eve?

The mind boggles. The taxpayers are presumably all a quiver.

Pity the poor billionaires

How horrible! Jamelle Bouie (Opinion, Nov 14) writes that if Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax went into effect in 1982, by 2018 Bill Gates would only have had US$13.9 billion left instead of $97 billion and Michael Bloomberg would have $12.3 billion instead of $51 billion.

How could Senator Warren be so heartless as to expect people in this day and age to be able to live off a measly $13.9 billion? No wonder one billionaire recently compared the persecution of billionaires to Hitler's persecution of the Jews!

Dear readers, will you join me in forming a new organisation which we'll call the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Billionaires?

Shopping malls are misnamed

I'm assuming, only assuming, that JC in his Nov 16 letter "Useless malls", is referring to malls, plazas, etc, in the Bangkok area. Bangkok malls are always full of shoppers. I do doubt, however, that many are actually buying; I mainly see people browsing. Bangkokians seem to spend most of their free time in malls, movie houses, socialising in coffee shops and so on.

Outside Bangkok, most malls are filled with people who idle away the hours enjoying the air con during the hot season, or buying ice-cream to cool down.

Most of my friends and neighbours descend upon the local Lotus supermarkets in the province to snap up the cut-price bargains that go on sale after 6pm and again at 8pm. And yes, we all spend our free time, if we are fortunate enough to have it, in malls just sitting around enjoying the air conditioning when it is hot, or socialising when cold. But very few are shoppers.

Ah, not to forget, most of us also skip the expensive mall restaurants, which tend to be two or three times higher priced than local venues.

Crop swap won't end drought

"During the upcoming dry season, the RID needs to focus on managing water for household consumption and ecological preservation. We need to ask farmers for their cooperation by switching to growing plants that use less water," Irrigation Dept deputy chief Thaweesak Thanadachopol was quoted in a Nov 11 report, "Parched reservoirs crimp harvests".

Good stuff, Khun Thaweesak. But as one who lives near Phimai, one of the provinces mentioned in the article and one of the worst hit by drought, what you suggest isn't quite so simple. You will be aware that a very large salt industry is located in Phimai, because of the concentration of natural salt in the area. The ground and groundwater in many areas are saline and rice is about the only crop that will tolerate this, so switching to another crop to save water may sound like good sense, but -- believe me, we've tried -- the results are not worth the trouble.

Also, most farmers in the Northeast, unless located by a convenient river, can only plant and harvest one crop a year anyway, so the call to resist planting a second crop is largely irrelevant. I have raised the subject of straw burning many times; farmers can bale it, plough it in or burn it. Baling is fine if one can dispose of or use the bales, ploughing it in without mulching it is useless as there is too much bulk to rot down, so they burn it; what else can they do? One answer is to spend less money on military hardware and buy a battalion or two of straw mulchers to parcel out to each province.