cost of living

[Gary 4,118]

191 baht

 

But I have to challenge that statement. Most factories don't pay the minimum wage. Plus, most Thais don't work in factories.

 

Some factories, particularly garment-type factories in the more remote provinces, employ what are basically indentured, illegal-immigrant workers and they pay the minimum wage or less.

 

But "most factories" includes Ford and Seagate and Toyota and Nike and Arrow and BMW. They include Charoen Phokphand and UFC and Unif and Bumblebee tuna. And they don't pay anything close to 191 baht. Most workers work for factories like that. And offices don't pay anything close to minimum wage, they pay way more.

 

Minimum-wage is as lousy an indicator of what people earn in Thailand as in any Western country. There are much better figures available, and anecdotes like your own household are a hell of a lot better indicator than minimum wage.

 

Oh, and actually at more than 40%, the four-wheel vehicle ownership in Thailand is higher than in any other Asian country bar Japan and Korea. Singapore, rated a first-world country, has 20% vehicle ownership. There's not a Thai house without a TV and "cable" is becoming quite common.

 

I worked in two Thai factories for a total of five years and both paid the common labor minimum wage. Like any factory, key people were obviously paid more. I had a girlfriend who worked for Seagate. She was a final inspector and made just over 10,000 baht per month. I live in Loei province and we occasionally hire locals for various odd jobs. They are quite happy to work for 150 baht per day. I'd be ashamed to pay such a pittance and I'm glad my wife handles that side of things.

 

And you are correct, minimum wage is a poor indicator because many and maybe most make a lot less.

[joekicker 53]

I worked in two Thai factories for a total of five years and both paid the common labor minimum wage.

 

Well, I guess that is a majority, for sure.

[Gary 4,118]

Well, I guess that is a majority, for sure.

 

So, how many Thai owned factories have you worked in? Sometime you should leave Pattaya/Bangkok/Rayong to see what the rest of Thailand is like. There happens to be more to the country than the areas you are obviously referring to.

[joekicker 53]

So, how many Thai owned factories have you worked in? Sometime you should leave Pattaya/Bangkok/Rayong to see what the rest of Thailand is like. There happens to be more to the country than the areas you are obviously referring to.

 

??? WTF?

 

I absolutely agree. It's what I said in my first post. I even brought up the WORST cases of the factories with slaves.

 

I think you directed this at the wrong person. I'm the one who INSISTED you have to consider them all. It was some other guy who said that two factories made a case.

 

And since I'm at it, don't get personal with me. I've lived here longer than most Thais have lived here. (Yes.) I've been in every province many times and pretty well every district of the country.

[Gary 4,118]

Well Joe, I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. I took your post as being sarcastic about my working in two Thai owned factories and your statement that;

 

-"Well, I guess that is a majority, for sure."-

[joekicker 53]

Well Joe, I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. I took your post as being sarcastic about my working in two Thai owned factories and your statement that;

 

-"Well, I guess that is a majority, for sure."-

 

I appreciate your toning it down. No sarcasm in that. I'm sincere.

 

But yes, I was being sarcastic originally. You seemed to be trying or claiming to extrapolate two factories into the national norm. To be clear: I do not FOR ONE INSTANT doubt your statements or your expertise which you state. But I doubt that the two factories you present are automatically what happens in Thailand just because you were there.

 

As I said, there are extremes among Thai factories - slave labour and all the way up to state of the art Volvo assembly and IC-making. In no way do I, or will I accept that any two factories at any of the stages at or between the extremes - represent some "average" or median or whatever.

[Owen` 2]

1) Singapore vehicle ownership is low because the government wants no smog. There is an enormous annual fee of . . . I think it was $30,000 USD per year to register a vehicle. The vehicle itself has a 2-3X cost tarriff on it to be shipped in. They do not want cars on the road there. You get from home to work via mass transit, which is among the best in the world. And yes, it is a 1st world country. One of the cleanest, richest, safest places you'll ever see.

 

2) Thais don't make much money. They can survive on their low pay inside the country, but they don't travel much, because they can't. They also don't have many lifestyle aspects farangs consider normal.

 

3) The guys on pensions, or about to be on pensions, NOW are likely to make it to the finish line comfortably. The guys expecting a pension in 5 or 10 or 15 years are not. Watch carefully for how this is done. The classic method is "we will continue to have a pension plan for our workers, but we are "freezing" it. We will make no more contributions to it and benefits earned within it are frozen as of today (meaning no more years of service in the calculation and no inflation adjustments from now on)." That is the method of devastation. If you have 15 yrs of service or whatever, and you need to work 10 more years to collect a pension -- what you're going to get is 15 yrs of calculated years of service, not 25. And that 15 years of service, which might translate to oh, pick a number, maybe $350 per month, is in 2007 dollars (or pounds or whatever). That $350 will suffer 10 years of inflation with no adjustment. 10 years at 3% inflation per year is [ (1.03 ) ^ 10 = 1.34 350/1.34 = $260 equivalent spending power) ]. And that is just in year 10 on the day of retirement. Ten years later that 260 is eroded another 1.34.

 

4) Please, guys, you MUST save money. And it must grow where you save it. And then after you have accumulated wealth, that you somehow managed to protect from theft from an ex wife or a lawyer, then you must divide it between bank savings and a broad stock market index. A 50/50 mix will last you at least 30 years if you spend only 4.5% of it in year 1, and adjust spending upwards by the rate of inflation each year.

[whittler 3]

I worked in two Thai factories for a total of five years and both paid the common labor minimum wage. Like any factory, key people were obviously paid more. I had a girlfriend who worked for Seagate. She was a final inspector and made just over 10,000 baht per month. I live in Loei province and we occasionally hire locals for various odd jobs. They are quite happy to work for 150 baht per day. I'd be ashamed to pay such a pittance and I'm glad my wife handles that side of things.

 

And you are correct, minimum wage is a poor indicator because many and maybe most make a lot less.

 

Hi Gary,

 

whittler here. Could you tell me about the cost of living in Mae Ram Phung, compaired to Pattaya/Jomtien?

They are the only places I stayed. I want to stay near the beach. Are there baht buses, and would it be safer to drive there? How far to Ban Chang? Are there condo's or would would it be better to rent a house?

Just trying to get a little info before I get there, and so I don't go crazy waiting for the house to sell.

 

whittler/ aka Mike

[joekicker 53]

1) Singapore vehicle ownership is low because the government wants no smog. There is an enormous annual fee of . . . I think it was $30,000 USD per year to register a vehicle. The vehicle itself has a 2-3X cost tarriff on it to be shipped in. They do not want cars on the road there. You get from home to work via mass transit, which is among the best in the world. And yes, it is a 1st world country. One of the cleanest, richest, safest places you'll ever see.

 

Oh, my. Talk about the ultimate straw man.

 

The point, sir, is not why Singaporeans don't have cars, although I suggest you bring your figures up to date on that in case someone wants to discuss that with you. Suffice it to say that the Certificate of Entitlement is an auction, not a fee. As of this month, a new Honda Civic will cost (very roughly) about 1.3 million baht. That's a lot more than Thailand, but it's about $37,700 US, nothing like your $30,000 add-on, and it's a one-time payment, not a yearly fee - which is high but nothing like what you say.

 

 

Now.

 

The point is - why do Thais have them and how can they afford them? Some people claim "most" working Thais earn at or below the minimum wage of about 5,500 baht a month? But anyone who walks (heh) down the street can see that claim exploded. The minimum payment on those cars/pickups you see is about 12,000 baht a month. And the people driving them, and their familes, eat, live, send their kids to school.

 

Now. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to explain how people making 191 baht a day or less pay for those cars/pickups in four years. This topic will not explode, thanks to the good archiving properties of Pattayatalk.com

 

I could have provided many other obvious examples of how "most" Thais do not make 191 baht or less, because they can't and still eat. But I thought vehicles was a good place to start since even a blind man knows there are so many of them, all over Thailand. As I said, about 40 per cent of working Thais have one or more.

[CheshireTom 1,377]

I could have provided many other obvious examples of how "most" Thais do not make 191 baht or less, because they can't and still eat. But I thought vehicles was a good place to start since even a blind man knows there are so many of them, all over Thailand. As I said, about 40 per cent of working Thais have one or more.

 

What constitutes a vehicle?

 

Plenty, possibly the majority, of Thais have the bog-standard moto-sai as their only means of transport ......... around 6k deposit for one costing 35-45k and the balance over 12-48 months. A long way short of 12k per month.

[joekicker 53]

What constitutes a vehicle?

 

In this discussion, I already stipulated four-wheel car or pickup. Add "sedan" or some such adjective if you wish. NOT motorcycles, not real trucks. I'm sure you've noticed some on the streets, highways and byways?

 

This is more up to date:

3 May 2007

Bangkok- About 14 million Thais, or 31 per cent of the population over the age of 20, now own a car, media reports said Thursday. According to a recently released regional survey by Nielsen Media Research, Thailand ranks fifth worldwide in terms of the number of total cars owned, estimated at 14 million, and has one of the highest car ownership percentages in Asia, said the Bangkok Post.

 

At 31 per cent of the adult population, Thailand ranked above Singapore (21 per cent), Hong Kong (16 per cent) and the Philippines (10 per cent), but below Malaysia (67 per cent), Taiwan (66 per cent) and South Korea (74 per cent).

 

China and India, although ranked among the fastest growing markets for automobiles, still have fairly low percentages of car ownership at 6 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively, said the Nielsen survey.

 

The US ranked first with the highest percentage of car ownership among adults at 89 per cent, or nine in every 10 adults, and a total of some 190.3 million vehicles. Japan was excluded from the survey.

Edited May 20, 2007 by joekicker

[winner 0]

Oh, my. Talk about the ultimate straw man.

 

The point, sir, is not why Singaporeans don't have cars, although I suggest you bring your figures up to date on that in case someone wants to discuss that with you. Suffice it to say that the Certificate of Entitlement is an auction, not a fee. As of this month, a new Honda Civic will cost (very roughly) about 1.3 million baht. That's a lot more than Thailand, but it's about $37,700 US, nothing like your $30,000 add-on, and it's a one-time payment, not a yearly fee - which is high

 

I have a friend in Singapore who just bought a new BMW. He paid about S$30,000 (one time) for his certificate which allowed him to buy a car and then paid about 2 1/2 times the US price for the car itself because of taxes and import tariffs. He also had to rent a place to park the car and show proof of this to get his certificate. The parking spot was not cheap. Also, no car over 10 years old is allowed on the road. This is how Singapore controls the number of cars on the road. They have a great public transportation system and have few traffic jams. That is what they want.

[joekicker 53]

I have a friend in Singapore who just bought a new BMW. He paid about S$30,000 (one time) for his

 

Much better. You originally said US dollars.

 

I hope you don't mind if I ask you one more time:

 

How do you account for how the Thais pay for THEIR millions and millions of four-wheel cars and pickups if "most" of them are paid around 191 baht per day? I'd ask you to note, too, that "most" -- hell, nearly all of the BG, who make way more than 191 baht, don't even have a four-wheel vehicle.

 

Again: I say that "most" Thais make way more than 191 baht. That is backed up by every available study, but in my opinion, you can see that with your own eyes just by trying to cross the highway. I don't even grasp why there is some sort of debate about this. It seems to be some sort of mass denial that Thailand has a middle class.

[touristman 1]

Much better. You originally said US dollars.

 

I hope you don't mind if I ask you one more time:

 

How do you account for how the Thais pay for THEIR millions and millions of four-wheel cars and pickups if "most" of them are paid around 191 baht per day? I'd ask you to note, too, that "most" -- hell, nearly all of the BG, who make way more than 191 baht, don't even have a four-wheel vehicle.

 

Again: I say that "most" Thais make way more than 191 baht. That is backed up by every available study, but in my opinion, you can see that with your own eyes just by trying to cross the highway. I don't even grasp why there is some sort of debate about this. It seems to be some sort of mass denial that Thailand has a middle class.

 

Thailand is a poor rural virtually third-world country.It has a middle class, albeit a small one in percentage terms.This middle class and lower upper classes buy all the mercs and the middle classes buy a small car or even a big rural poorish family can scrape together to get a carryboy or some such utility vehicle on HP or second-hand.

 

Most of these middle-class / poorish buyers IMHO are aspirational purchasers who buy above their means.Lets not forget the masses of creditcard holders and huge increase in household debt during the years that Thailand went from a sustainable to an aspirational / consumption-driven economy.

 

IMO, and through experience, most Thai families are poor.People need to get out of the tourist areas and the big towns and cities to see it for themselves.Or they could just consult some demographics and socio-economic figures.Either way, i agree with Gary...........which feels strange