Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well, tax mongers in Thailand and reminding them of this “little economic shift’. What are we talking about here? Well first of all let me preface this by saying unfortunately, for seemingly the last minimum of a year, it has probably more like 18 months at this point, from roughly August of 2023, there has been this increasingly loud narrative that Thailand is somehow in an economic crisis and therefore we have to go into tremendous amounts of debt to create digital money, that we then hand out and then oh now we are in a totalitarian financial system but never mind, it's an emergency, we have to do this. I have been screaming to the rafters for over a year now especially in light of the quarter 1, 2024 numbers where we saw some of the highest consumer spending we have seen in decades here in Thailand. I've been screaming to the rafters that hey there isn't really much of an economic crisis other than the one brought about by the Government itself by shutting down our economy for two and a half years which if you want to know why tax revenues are low and why we have a little bit of lag in terms of economics and income and cash flow and things, well shutting down an economy for two and a half years does that. You can't just turn it on and off like a light switch, okay? That's the first thing to understand. But then on top of that, Thailand bounced back hard, Thailand came at it hard, and it had some other factors involved there as we discussed. Cannabis policy changing probably had an impact on the economy, it probably had an impact on tourism too. That being said, again Thailand, and everybody in Thailand who was involved in this should get some credit, okay. The Government, and everybody who really got behind, 'hey we need to get tourism back" and we pushed for it and we got there. I am very proud of everybody in the Government and everybody here in Thailand for getting to that level. That was great. But we need to disabuse everyone of this notion that there is some kind of economic calamity that requires some, frankly over the top, response that'll put us into either totalitarianism or so much debt that we will have serious problems in terms of having to pay it off long term. 

That said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Minister vows tax reform to enhance competitiveness. I just love this "tax reform". It's like "no, you're trying to get more taxes” is what it's coming out to and actually creating an incredibly complex Byzantine system that foreigners will have to deal with that in my opinion will discourage them from wanting to come into this economy and operate but we have discussed that at length in other videos. That said, quoting directly: "Mr. Pichai, (and that is Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira) said that this year marks the turning point for the Thai economy. Over the past decade, economic growth has been paltry, with an average real growth rate of less than 2%, he said." Well first of all, let's be real clear. Demographically, for Thailand, less than 2%, not terrible. Also, the last 5 years have not exactly been just smooth sailing. Again, two and a half, three of those years we were totally shut down. There's a whole year in there where we were trying to come back off all this COVID nonsense and get back on our feet that was very suboptimal, but okay we went through it. Only now, only in 2024 we are back to numbers that we were used to going back before quarter one of 2020 okay? So that's the first thing to understand is that yeah, the economy is not great right now because we are coming off of basically 5 years of basically Soviet-command economic policy is basically, what we are coming off of and they were horrible, so it's going to take a moment to recover from that. Frankly I'm proud of Thailand's fast economic recovery. It's been better as a practical matter than any other jurisdiction I've seen, read about, or researched. So from that perspective, I'm really tired of this narrative that Thailand has got some kind of economic problem. I'm not saying it's perfect; I'm not saying we get to get complacent, but I am saying that look, this constant pearl-clutching and this constant hyperbole of how bad the economy is, it has an agenda behind it and that agenda we have discussed a lot on this channel. Quoting further: "The economy is expected to grow by 2.7 - 2.8% in 2024 which represents a significant, positive, shift. Remind these bureaucrats of this and I will be doing it myself - probably from this channel, probably bringing up this exact quote again multiple times - because I presume over the course of the next year, they are going to try again with this narrative of economic disaster to try and get us into digital magic bean token money or to try to get us into some boondoggle deal where the country has to go into a bunch more national debt that it doesn't really need. 

So the reason for this video is if for nothing else to point out the data point that the Finance Minister himself had to actually point out that "hey actually there's been a positive shift in terms of the economics, here in the Kingdom of Thailand."