Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the digital wallet scheme and GDP, that's Gross Domestic Product here in Thailand. This is a video I kind of didn't really want to make; I didn't really want to start getting into this stuff but it kind of came to a head and I just thought, people may be looking at all the facets of this overall topic, this whole digital wallet, digital money scheme. Then on top of it, every discussion I see about it, the only thing I can liken it to, it is like fish not realizing they are in water. So you couldn't ask a fish what water is, what water is like, because they are immersed in it. We are conscious people; we are aware that air exists for example but if you were to try to talk to an animal and say "well what's it like having air?" they don't know. Again a fish in water doesn't really realize they are surrounded by water. What am I talking about here?

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Digital Wallet scheme coming in Q4, says Srettha. Quoting directly: "The Government's 500 billion Baht", and let's state this again - 500 billion Baht - and where is that coming from? Because in everything I have read they have said "well we are not taking it out of the budget" so is it coming from a loan? And if so, where it's not real money, what's being loaned? What value is being created? And that is really what all this comes down to is what value is being created for these chits if you will, these tokens these digital markers. Quoting further and then that is 500 billion Baht, so 3.75 billion US dollars. Quoting further: "Digital wallet handout scheme will be rolled out in the 4th quarter this year." That is another one. How they just say, “well we are just going to do this” and I am not certain that all of Parliament is on board with this. Most Thai folks seem kind of ambivalent. Yeah, everybody loves the notion of "free money" but at the same time and this is something I have to commend Thais for, they are far more aware of this than my countrymen of birth back in the United States; there is no free money at the end of the day, there's no such thing. It has got to come from somewhere: either print it, steal it from somebody else, you take it in via taxes or you earn it. There is no such thing as "free money". So again, quoting further: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said on Wednesday." So again, they just say "oh it's coming in the fourth quarter". Well, based on what? Do you have a mandate to do it? Has there been a passed Law to create this? I mean has there been a line item in the budget? Where is this money and all of this coming from? Quoting further: "Mr Srettha, also the Finance Minister, told a briefing the policy would boost gross domestic product growth by 1.2 to 1.6 percentage points." Couple of things here. There is a great guy on YouTube, you'll see him across YouTube, he's all around: Alistair McLeod I think he had to do with gold money before, and now I think he's McLeod Finance@McLeod Finance on Twitter. I listen to him quite often. It was an epiphany to me and I kind of knew this when I was younger and then unfortunately I went through the indoctrination of a liberal education and you get kind of confounded by all this Keynesianism but GDP is simply a function of bank credit, it only tracks bank credit so basically transactions within a closed circuit system if you will, that's the best way to look at it. So one thing and this is especially pertinent here in Thailand, it doesn't take account of any of the informal economy and there is other stuff I can quote out there of all these Banker types who are talking about "we just need to rein in that informal economy; we need to get all that", yeah so you can tax it and squeeze every dime and drop out of it, every ounce of innovation, every ounce of entrepreneurial instinct out of it. No, that's a terrible idea.

Meanwhile, the other thing to think of when you are looking at this is okay, if GDP is only transactions and this isn't real money, they just inject it into the system via this digital scheme, so again how is it even a loan if the nation really didn't receive anything real in exchange for their pledge to pay back a half a trillion Baht which is not an insignificant amount of money for Thais by any stretch or the nation generally, but also, and this is something to bear in mind and I said this before when they kept talking about how this would stimulate the economy, this isn't stimulus, you are just moving stuff around you've already got. That's all that's happening. This GDP, you are just creating more transactions and then tabulating them. Meanwhile, all of those transactions are taxable events so that augers well for the Government because they get to scrape the cream off the top of that to some extent, but meanwhile it's really bad for both the Government and the nation because it is highly inflationary because at the end of the day you're printing money out of nothing and you are not creating concomitant value in terms of goods and services; you are just creating new tokens and then getting people to trade things based on the faith in those tokens which I don't know why you have faith in something that isn't real, but leave that aside, and then they are taxing those transactions but they are not creating new value.So this notion of "oh it's going to increase GDP by 1.2 - 1.6%", yes it will increase the frequency of transactions occurring within the closed circuit banking system but it isn't doing it by creating new value and thereby growing the economy. It's just moving stuff around that already exists in this economy as it sits right at this moment and taxes folks associated with all of that movement and puts the country on the hook for more debt to GDP ratio in terms of an extra half trillion Baht in terms of more debt and down the road. And they say "well we can destroy this money very quickly, digitally", which is a problem in and of itself because as I have said many other videos, this is just pure surveillance. They said it themselves that they can they can basically turn the thing on and off; they have said that they can basically set it up geographically so the different geographic regions you can use it or not, so again just the fact that they can destroy it and they say "oh well that gets rid of the inflation," well neat. Again another point I would bring up is how is it a loan if they just destroy it at the end of it? So where did the nation go into debt? What did we get in terms of real value in exchange for our pledge as a nation to pay back half a billion Baht, half a trillion Baht? What do the nation really get for that? The answer is nothing. What the nation got was a bunch of vouchers to move some things around; to move goods and services around - pre-existing goods and services around in the economy - and thereby creating an opportunity for the government to tax them more. That is what has occurred or would occur in the event that this goes through. So again, I state it is smoke and mirrors. At the end of the day also, I am not a big Keynesian guy; I don't love this notion that Government should be injecting itself into the underlying economy, and if you want any proof about how that doesn't work Thailand, look to the West! You can see it; it's on display. Do not make these mistakes. I came from there and I came here because this place has common sense or at least it did when I got here and they made decisions that made sense for the nation, not just to create a bunch of smoke and mirrors so people feel good and then they get to extract some more taxes. That isn't good policy overall. What Thailand needs to be doing is exactly what she is doing now. Getting back on her feet after all this nonsense, Governmental intervention that we saw in terms of COVID where they shut down our economies and I have a problem really believing that the same apparatus that said "oh you can't do anything economic for years on end" now is going to come to our rescue, I am not really seeing that. Meanwhile creation of value is what Thailand is good at. Stick with that. That's the better thing to do rather than worry about some new gimmick to "stimulate" the economy.