Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand having some sort of low growth rates. Let me just jump into this. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: A Better Property deal for foreigners could mean saving or selling Thailand. Quoting directly: "At the moment, not more than 49 percent of condo units can be in foreign ownership to ensure Thais retain majority control, whilst most land leases (e.g. on villas) are a maximum of 30 years to avoid any suggestion that the country is too indulgent to more than one generation of foreigners." 

So, to understand this and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail for the main thrust of the video, because what it is basically talking about is expanding foreign ownership rights over property here in Thailand or the possibility thereof. Personal opinion, I think this is rather unlikely. We've seen pushes for this in the past couple, three years. It's clearly - and I'm going to do other videos on this - it is clearly a non-partisan issue here in Thailand. The vast majority of Thais tend to agree they don't want foreign nationals gaining rights or control over Thai property. Now foreigners can disagree with that or think whatever they want, but that's just sort of the state of things. 

That said, the thrust of this video is going a slightly different direction. Quoting further: "Given that the Thai economy overall is stuck with low growth rates, the potential reforms are intended to create much needed extra revenue and to motivate the property market as a whole." How? By selling out our own country to foreigners? This extra Revenue so-called? That said, it's this ongoing narrative that Thailand somehow has a problem economically when the reality is I'm just not seeing it. Now the so-called low “growth rates”, compared to who, or whom? I can't remember what's the right way to say that, but what are we talking about? Compared to Indonesia? They're starting from near zero. Of course their growth rates are high. They put in a laundromat somewhere and they get 1% GDP added. Meanwhile, Vietnam's very much a similar circumstance although more developed. There's still far more developing compared to Thailand. At the end of the day, Thailand is a very sophisticated economy. It's not some third world backwater the way it's oftentimes portrayed. Meanwhile, I'm sick and tired of this notion that Thailand is somehow economically backwards which is nonsense when you really do the examination of the GDP and where things stand, debt to GDP ratio etc. 

Now the reasoning for trying to sell this whole narrative that Thailand is somehow in trouble in terms of her economy seems to be to sell some political agenda, like in the case of digital money, we saw, "oh Thailand is in a terrible place", notwithstanding we saw one of the best first quarters we've seen in a decade. Even notwithstanding COVID, we saw consumer spending through the roof at the first quarter of 2024. So, the whole notion that Thailand is in this economic sort of doldrums is kind of ridiculous. Then meanwhile, compared to who? Again, if you're comparing Thailand to other folks in Southeast Asia, they are more developing, that's just a fact. Meanwhile, compared to what in the West? Where is the "growth" in the West? Most of the "growth" is basically chicanery manufactured by the Central Bank's through all of their operation twists and whatnot, where they basically or through government spending which is creating “growth” via effectively Government spending which that's not growth, that's tax and spend by the Government; it's redistribution of wealth maybe, but I don't think you can call it growth. 

The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day yeah, is Thailand's growth rate as high as it once was? No, but it's more developed, so at the end of the day, I don't think there's anything wrong with Thailand's growth rate and I think it's very, quite honestly, I think it's rather disingenuous to say there's a growth rate problem without at least providing some level of clarification when saying like look you can't really compare apples to apples, the growth rate between a country like Thailand and for example a country like Indonesia.