Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the absence of what I have often described as Perpetual Expats or Long-Term Tourists, and I think two things are driving their absence. 

One, Immigration Policy simultaneously being kind of relaxed on one level and then tightened on another, coupled with fear of tax policy in Thailand is resulting in these folks not being here and we are seeing this I think in earnest during this low season. These people, not unlike the standard retiree that comes here sets down and says, boom I have got my bank account, I have got my Retirement Visa and my pension is coming in. I just want to sit here and spend money in Thailand. They are similar. They are kind of a slightly different species if you will insofar as they are oftentimes working; I have discussed these folks in other videos. They are contractors, they are oil and gas folks, they are people that have a more remote job. I've seen more and more of those folks. They run a website, or they can work remotely but they have a specialized online skill set that allows them to work more remotely. I'm not talking about what people call digital nomads; it's a different thing. Digital nomads, they seem to be it's kind of what, there used to be this thing called PT Shamrock, Perpetual Traveller - I think they still have a website and stuff - but it's almost a novelty in certain ways. In any event, the thinking is you just kind of travel forever. That's not who these guys are.  I think that the phenomenon started in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. People found Thailand, they liked it. They rotated back to the world to use a phrase from Full Metal Jacket; they went back to America, and they said you know what?  I'm going to start being a tourist in Thailand, and they come out to Thailand for a month out of the year. Then as time went by, they made more money and they began to slow it down more and more before they went into full on retirement, they started to be out here more and more and cycle in here more and more and would be here for two months at a stretch or three months at a stretch and then be gone for a while and then come back. Again, oil and gas guys tend to be like this, or guys that work offshore in various other industries, contractors and such, they travel in for a while, they go out, they go in, they go out. But now these guys are freaked out about tax policy here in Thailand and these are the exact kind of people that come here and spend real money over the course of 6 or 8 weeks and then just leave. They're the people you don't want to alienate the most and it looks to me like tax policy is alienating them the most. 

So I'm hoping we will see some kind of an amendment or rescission to the memorandum of quarter 3, 2023, which has brought on this amazing Tax Policy that we have had to deal with insofar as the only people it seems to feed is a bunch of useless “so-called” service providers, I've sometimes referred to them as stamp-pimps but these so-called service providers that seem to be feeding on people's fear that they need to file all this stuff - and maybe they do, maybe they don't, it depends on circumstances - but is it really helping the Thai economy? I'm not really seeing it because I can't imagine there's any real revenue coming from that. Then looking at just the streets and looking at the restaurants and places where people are at, or supposed to be at, I think we have lost a major demographic that just was completely overlooked by policymakers who were too concerned about trying to draw in revenue from really a "stream" and I put that in quotes because it is a stream that really wasn't there.