YimSiam Posted March 19, 2015 Report Share Posted March 19, 2015 Gentlemen , driving in my motorcar this morning on the Autobahn the news on the radio said that ex Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces court trial due to having bought 1 years rice production at double the market price to gain support from the relevant farmers . It might have cost the kingdom the sum of about 2 billion Euros . Is this , tecnically , the full truth ? How will the people of Thailand EVER get their money back? Ah, so - but it seems the money is already in the hands of... the people of Thailand... who elected TRT and PT on the understanding that they would get money to the farmers... which they did. And now? We have ourselves a conundrum. I suppose eventually the question about what to do next should go to the Thai people. I wonder what they will say, when asked by ballot? Just kidding - we know what they'll say. There's a reason populism is popular! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YimSiam Posted March 19, 2015 Report Share Posted March 19, 2015 Oops... YimSiam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted March 19, 2015 Report Share Posted March 19, 2015 Gentlemen , driving in my motorcar this morning on the Autobahn the news on the radio said that ex Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces court trial due to having bought 1 years rice production at double the market price to gain support from the relevant farmers . It might have cost the kingdom the sum of about 2 billion Euros . Is this , tecnically , the full truth ? Well technically her older brother was conducting the orchestra, but as lead violin, Yingie is the focus of the blame at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo_bill Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Did the surplus cash go to the farmers by paying them inflated prices or did Yingluck steal it or did it disappear somehow in the political jungle ? Is there any evidence for anything ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 I don't know about evidence, others may be able to point to that, but the scam involved guaranteed prices, high volumes bought, middle men profiting and bigger men profiting . Or none of this is true, but vast sums of money are missing from the process, according to most people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jitagawn Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 20,000 MILLION DOLLARS... POOF I'd be upset as well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YimSiam Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 My understanding is that the point of the scheme was essentially to secure control of the government, from which grand profits could be made by the Thaksin camp, and that the scheme itself was not expected to be a source of income directly. Thailand is a country of rice farmers, and they have to be subsidized for a government to have the support of sufficient people to win elections. So the Thaksin side proposed subsidies higher than those of the Democrat side - the Dems were offering something like 11,000 per ton in subsidies, while the Thaksins offered 15,000. It was expected to be a loser, like all subsidies, but to keep people working in the industry happy. Unfortunately for Yingluck, the subsidies were too high, and they had a very stupid plan to try to play the rice market to get back their money by manipulating the market price in their favor. But markets are more clever than people, and through market forces (and an unluckily-timed change in India's export law, which allowed India to take up the slack when Thailand held back their rice) the thing ended up costing hugely more than expected. I'm sure there was some level of corruption and middle-men taking cuts in the scheme, but that's incidental - the point was giving money to rice farmers to get votes, in order to control the government (obviously, that ends up being a very lucrative position, but not because of rice profits). There was delay in payments to farmers, and when the project was falling apart, there may have been reductions in the payments expected by the farmers - I'm not sure about that. But the farmers are not the unhappy ones, generally - while it was running, it was lucrative for them. In my view, it certainly appears to be more of a case of a dumb-but-effective populist measure to get votes, that resulted in much higher costs to the state than expected, than a crime (though crimes may have been committed in the period when the scheme was collapsing, and the Thaksin camp was scrambling to persuade folks that it wasn't as bad as it seemed). The US subsidizes farmers and billionaires, the Japanese subsidize their fishermen, Hong Kong and Macau just hand out cash periodically and pay residents' electric bills - it's what governments do to win votes (well, in Macau and HK, not really votes - they buy complacency, you could say). But go too big, and fuck with market forces, you get burned and it becomes unsustainable - and down you go, Ms. Prime Minister! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo_bill Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 Thank you for your enlightening words . A vote buyer classic , here they have recently installed a dramatic increase in pension payments encouraging people to give up working earlier . All involved should be incarcerated right away for an act of wastage of money that they shall not have in a few years due to demographic reasons . Poor Yingluck , maybe time to join the democrats . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 " here they have recently installed a dramatic increase in pension payments encouraging people to give up working earlier." It seems to me, if there is only are only a certain amount of jobs available, does it not make sence to encourage old people, who have nearly come to to end of their working lives, to move aside for younger workers looking for jobs. Giving full employement to the young and generous pensions to the old. Or is it not as simple as that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 " here they have recently installed a dramatic increase in pension payments encouraging people to give up working earlier." It seems to me, if there is only are only a certain amount of jobs available, does it not make sence to encourage old people, who have nearly come to to end of their working lives, to move aside for younger workers looking for jobs. Giving full employement to the young and generous pensions to the old. Or is it not as simple as that Where I am, people have being paying tax for all their lives on the understanding that a pension will be available. Now they give jobs to the young and cut pensions to the old. I'd complain but nobody would listen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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