OPINION

Economy reeling

Re: "Doom or data", (PostBag, March 21) & "The economy is waiting to hit an iceberg", (Opinion, March 20).

Barely had the ink dried on his just-written column when someone challenged freelance economist Chartchai Parasuk's assertions, refusing to see the truth for what it is. Only this time, it was Songdej Praditsmanont who challenged his view, rather than a foreigner, as was the case previously.

Rather than the Thai economy hitting an iceberg, which could have been avoided with the right planning, as Mr Chartchai insists, perhaps it's more apt to say that it has already hit such an object, if only partially so.

If one carefully reads his previous articles on the subject, one will find that he believes the economy should already have crashed and has only been prevented from doing so by interventions in financial markets.

Just look around you: Does Thailand look like a nation brimming with confidence, with an economy firing on all cylinders? Hardly.

What you see is more beggars than ever before, and people picking litter out of rubbish bins just to survive.

Nothing exemplifies the downturn in the Thai economy more, as far as I'm concerned, than the bankruptcy of my favourite fast food restaurant, Texas Chicken, in September 2024.

If a worldwide established food chain such as this exits the country, then what's to stop other franchises from also doing so? There are rumblings in various business circles that Burger King or Subway are suffering great distress, not only here, but around the world.

English language institutes have been big in Thailand, but it appears that these, too, are now struggling.

For instance. I know of teachers who had been promised work at language institutes during the holidays in October and March, only to be told that not enough students had enrolled to justify the extra classes.

So in summary, I think that Mr Chartchai's view has merit.

Eastern perspective

Re: "Trump's tariffs will end in tears all round", (Opinion, March 24).

While rooted in Japanese economics, I appreciated Prof Koichi Hamada's comments about US President Donald Trump's trade and tariff policies. Yet, when Prof Hamada claims that America is a "nation of immigrants", whether he teaches at Yale or not, it sure seems to me that such a perspective is born of comparison with an unusually insulated, low immigration society: Japan.

From 1632 onwards, America has actually been a nation of settlers rather than immigrants who arrive after a country is built.

Settlers like my ancestors create new societies, more so than standard immigrants, who mainly join existing ones.

As for jobs and inflation, I would remind the professor that his veiled allusion to economic doom is passé as there are "tears all around" already.

I, for one, would rather pay more money making my own things rather than continue to pay for imported things I could make myself which are stamped "Made in Japan".

Arigato, Professor.