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Labourers still in heavy debts


rooster59

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2 hours ago, MaxYakov said:

I can't help but  wonder how the UTCC’s Center for Economic and Business Forecasting categorises an individual as a "labourer".

 

1 hour ago, coulson said:

Well, it's a tad more polite than peon

Yes, thanks. but Thailand is not a Spanish-speaking country, is it? The question was how they "classified" (I used "catagorises") a worker as a "labourer", not what word they used to describe them.

 

From this quote from the Thai PBS article:

 

"The center director Thanawat Pholvichai said the survey found that 96% of the total labour force were in debt and total average household debt amounted to 137,988 baht per household with each of the labour household has a monthly installments payments of 5,326 baht." (emphasis mine)

 

The survey uses both "total labour force" and "total average household debt" which is are very wide classifications, IMHO and would seem to me to cover just about everyone in Thailand who worked for wages and/or every household as well.

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1 hour ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Yes, thanks. but Thailand is not a Spanish-speaking country, is it? The question was how they "classified" (I used "catagorises") a worker as a "labourer", not what word they used to describe them.

 

From this quote from the Thai PBS article:

 

"The center director Thanawat Pholvichai said the survey found that 96% of the total labour force were in debt and total average household debt amounted to 137,988 baht per household with each of the labour household has a monthly installments payments of 5,326 baht." (emphasis mine)

 

The survey uses both "total labour force" and "total average household debt" which is are very wide classifications, IMHO and would seem to me to cover just about everyone in Thailand who worked for wages and/or every household as well.

Meeeeeooow....

 

Categorized, classified, workers, peons.....these are all words :1zgarz5:

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5 hours ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Yes, thanks. but Thailand is not a Spanish-speaking country, is it? The question was how they "classified" (I used "catagorises") a worker as a "labourer", not what word they used to describe them.

 

From this quote from the Thai PBS article:

 

"The center director Thanawat Pholvichai said the survey found that 96% of the total labour force were in debt and total average household debt amounted to 137,988 baht per household with each of the labour household has a monthly installments payments of 5,326 baht." (emphasis mine)

 

The survey uses both "total labour force" and "total average household debt" which is are very wide classifications, IMHO and would seem to me to cover just about everyone in Thailand who worked for wages and/or every household as well.

 

3 hours ago, coulson said:

Meeeeeooow....

 

Categorized, classified, workers, peons.....these are all words :1zgarz5:

Yes sir, words comprise language and communication. You seem to prefer those that cannot be found in a dictionary and animated emoticons. For clarity, can you define "Meeeeeooow" for us, please?

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3 hours ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Yes sir, words comprise language and communication. You seem to prefer those that cannot be found in a dictionary and animated emoticons. For clarity, can you define "Meeeeeooow" for us, please?

There's a more subtle way of communication called reading between the lines, your dictionary can't help you with that.

 

You didn't understand my first post at all, evidently. Carry on with your pedantic rambling about words though. For someone who claims not to be interested in the word they used to describe workers, you spend a lot of time going on about words and their meanings.

 

So you're wondering how they classified workers as labourers? They may as well call them slaves, because that is the mindset.

 

Fyi :

 

peon
ˈpiːən/
noun
  1. 1.
    a Spanish-American day labourer or unskilled farm worker.
     
  2. 2.
    (in South and SE Asia) a low-ranking soldier or worker.

 

 

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Not uncommon for the blue collar working class to be in debt to the point where it may become unmanageable.   In the USA those Payday loans have been an incredibly bad thing for many to get involved in.  Often you hear about college graduates and Medical interns and Lawyers graduating and trying to enter the workforce with 50,000 or 100,000 USD or more in debt.  But they have outs as they say in poker and a reasonable chance or paying things off and progressing economically.  Sad to hear how many low income laborers are stuck, especially when some of them incur debts right up front by paying some sort of dues or immigration work around money, or some other scammy things

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1 hour ago, gk10002000 said:

Not uncommon for the blue collar working class to be in debt to the point where it may become unmanageable.   In the USA those Payday loans have been an incredibly bad thing for many to get involved in.  Often you hear about college graduates and Medical interns and Lawyers graduating and trying to enter the workforce with 50,000 or 100,000 USD or more in debt.  But they have outs as they say in poker and a reasonable chance or paying things off and progressing economically.  Sad to hear how many low income laborers are stuck, especially when some of them incur debts right up front by paying some sort of dues or immigration work around money, or some other scammy things

50K to 100K is probably the median amount of debt from a 4 year college degree, degrees for medical doctors and lawyers at a prestigious American college are likely to cost in the 200K to 500K range.. I did not have the money to go to college so I enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 19 years of age, did 24 years of service, worked as a contractor and government civilian for 11 years then retired at age 54, completely debt free in Thailand. I continue to read and learn, but going deeply into debt at the start of my working life seemed to be a non-optimal choice.

 

With the technology breakthroughs related to the internet I wonder why an online degree (accredited and at a much lower cost) has not become a reality in a larger and more legitimate way than it has. I think the answer is that not many of the people involved in higher education are concerned about lowering the costs of getting a college degree.

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On 28/04/2018 at 4:26 PM, connda said:

This is the problem with a debt-fueled society.  Banks provide easy credit, 'artificial wealth' is injected into the economy, prices rise, wages fail to match inflation, and the only way the average folk can make ends meet is by accumulating more debt.  Banks are complicit and predatory, and when the house of cards falls, the banks pull in favors from politicians in order to be made whole via the government.
Privatized profits, socialize losses - and screw everyone but the rich in the processes. 

This will end badly.  This is how unregulated capitalism works.  I'm not anti-capitalism, but it needs checks and balances.  The working class should not be driven into debt servitude just to live.  Yet - here we are!  And it is not something unique to Thailand.

A picture is worth xxxxxx

1525053901042.jpg

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Im not so sure the debt is that bad if it includes housing debt, one should make an exception for housing debt. Creditcard debt and unsecured loan debts are a problem, housing debt as its covered by possessions is not so much of a problem. Besides the money spend on paying that debt would otherwise spend on rent. 

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On 4/28/2018 at 1:57 PM, Samui Bodoh said:

"...The center director Thanawat Pholvichai said the survey found that 96% of the total labour force were in debt and total average household debt amounted to 137,988 baht per household with each of the labour household has a monthly installments payments of 5,326 baht.

He said, however, it was fortunate that 65.4% of their loans are legitimate or official loans which carries an interest rates of 10.6%.

The rest 34.6% are unorganized loans which lenders would charge them 20% interest per month. In such a huge borrowing rate, he said labourers then often defaulted their loan payments to these loan sharks..."

 

If I were the government of Thailand and I cared about the common man (yes, I know, but...) I would be terrified by these numbers; they are a nuclear reactor waiting to melt. How are these people expected to both re-pay their debts AND save money for retirement? I don't see how it can be done, especially with labourers; they are not the sub-set of the workforce who are going to move into ever higher-paying employment. 

 

Thailand has managed to maintain growth for several years (although it would have been more without the coup, but that is a different post), but can it grow fast enough to support these people? Is there the political will to support these people? My quick answer is... wait for it... not likely.

 

Jump to flashing red warning light!

 

Finally a quick story from back in the day along the lines of the posts above. I lived in Indonesia and shared a house with some Indonesian teachers. At the end of the month they had no money, so they survived on glasses of tea with an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass. YUCK! I suppose that I am grateful; after watching them drink that, I stopped adding sugar to my tea or coffee right there on the spot and never took up the habit again.

 

Total household debt is about 11 trillion baht at the moment. Assuming 5% interest payments, the banks are milking the general public for 550 billion every year.

To put that into perspective, total tax revenue is about 2.2 trillion per year.

 

Scary numbers indeed.

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