Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we're asking, "another wealthy foreigner visa" and "what part of Thai Land is so hard to understand?" What are we talking about here? I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Thaksin touts golden visa, higher travel fees to boost Thailand.

First off why is Thaksin touting anything? I have discussed this in other videos, he's supposed to be ‘come back and not be political’. We were supposed to have this reconciliation; he got his sentence reduced. There is a whole issue, I could go into it; I have already kind of done the analysis on that. I recently saw an article where I am not going to go deep into this but where the prison doctor said he could have been kept in prison; he didn't have to stay where he stayed. So there is some question as to the propriety of his conditions of his "incarceration" but the whole point of him coming back was supposed to be that we were going to reconcile and put all this behind us and virtually none of that has happened. If anything, the opposite of that has happened. Now I discussed the ramifications of all of this political stuff and how it can affect what I call Expat Thailand in our paid news service, so if you are interested in that, feel free to email us [email protected] for information on how to get on the mailing list. We do long-form videos; I do longer form videos it's kind of stream of consciousness but I have bullet points I talk about and how all this stuff is going to impact living here and everything. Right now, the Government is very much kind of in a fluid situation and exactly how it shakes out remains to be seen. What are the ramifications of that in terms of like Immigration Policy, possible Tax Policy, possible Banking Policy, we get into in the paid news service. The other thing is while I am talking about this stuff, I'm going to go ahead and just quickly note that my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. For those who are interested in American style diner food, Pancake Palace as the name implies, we've got pancakes and breakfast anytime as well as again American Diner style food: chilli bowls, buffalo wings, cheeseburgers, hamburgers. We have got the good old glass bottled Coke. If you are interested in that, come on by. There is a link in the description below to the Pancake Palace. 

Now back to what we are talking about here, again bangkokpost.com, Thaksin touts golden visa, higher travel fees to boost Thailand.  Before we get into this, the whole "Golden Visa" thing, I talk about this in another video, and I'll probably make another one on this probably this week just on the whole issue of Digital Nomads and Golden Visas. I think a lot of this has proven to be something of a red herring and I don't know how beneficial it is to the country concerned or even the so-called Nomads or holders of these Golden Visas, the whole scheme just is kind of off. That said, quoting directly from this article: "Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra suggested Thailand create a Golden Visa scheme for wealthy foreigners to become long-term residents, and called on Airports of Thailand Plc (AOT) to hike passenger service fees to boost the sluggish economy." So another tourist tax? He's proposing another tourist tax. They have been talking about that forever; I think they just imposed one recently that got kind of quietly added in. I have talked about this in the past. The whole notion of a Tourist Tax, the optics of it are just not good. And even though people, whatever it is, it would be $6, the equivalent of 200 Baht or something, it'll just be sort of added into the price of airfares and things. It adds up. I mean to my mind getting more tourists in should be the issue, not trying to fleece them on the way into the airport. That's the first thing. Meanwhile, again Golden Visas? Thaksin came up with the Elite Visa, and as I have discussed in other videos, the Elite Visa is effectively a private program. How has that benefited Thailand as a whole? You can join the membership program, you pay the fee, if immigration does their background check and things, and by the way, Thailand Elite Visa is now often referred to as Thailand Privilege Visa whatever, same, same but different as they say in sort of Tinglish, English mixed with Thai, but the Elite Visa was created; it was supposed to be lifetime, provide all these benefits and it was supposed to be a big boon to Thailand. Where has it been a big boon to Thailand? Okay the other thing is where this Government’s policy and by this Government, I mean the "Core Coalition" Party what I call the “Rump Coalition”, seems to be touting this, "we need more super rich people, we don't really need all this hoi polloi coming in", and reasonable people can disagree regarding volume of immigrants and things like that, I am certainly against illegal immigration especially as it pertains to the countries I am from - Thailand or America - especially in the US, I don't agree with just opening the Border, letting anyone in, but here in Thailand we are talking about foreigners flying I; everybody knows who is coming in. It's not a matter of controlling at source immigration for enforcement purposes. 

The point I am trying to make is, this notion that attracting "wealthy people" only to the exclusion of others is somehow going to benefit Thailand. We are sitting here in one of the lowest low seasons I have ever seen, and I think we are looking down the barrel of maybe not the greatest high season. In fact I saw an article the other day that said, I think the Tourism Authority or one of the authorities here in Thailand, had already downgraded the upcoming high season or total numbers for the year from 40 million down to 35 million. They had already decreased their estimate for what this year is going to look like, and it can all be attributed directly at policies inspired by this guy having to do with Core Coalition Party having to do with you so-called rump Coalition. They brought out the DTV which they touted as something that was super great, and now we are seeing all kinds of blowback across the internet of people that are having all kinds of problems with the DTV, not least of which is banking because people can't get banking facilities here. Then other things. We've seen them try to roll out these various programs to try to attract "wealthy people" and again the thinking is they are going to spend a bunch of money here. Well, just because somebody's wealthy, doesn't mean they just automatically are going to come to Thailand and buy a Ferrari. The other thing I would look at is look again, a wealthy person can only eat so much, they can only consume so many drinks of wine at a given establishment, they can only go to so many events and so many venues; they are one person. Whereas as if you attract a more higher volume of say middle-class people like in the standard Retirement Visa category for example, those people can afford to do things. Again they can afford to eat, they can afford to go to vacation destinations and venues and things, and it's more of a benefit. Why are we constricting out a certain, seemingly, a certain class of individuals if you will, and encouraging less numbers of people that just happen to have a higher net worth? I don't think it's being born out. The proof is in the pudding. We are looking at what these policies have borne out in terms of the Elite Visa, in terms of these other types of visas - the LTR comes to mind, which I'll get into here in a minute - but where are the numbers? And again, a large number of middle-class folks to my mind is going to benefit Thailand way more than a small number of just super rich people. Quoting further: "The Golden Visa scheme could potentially bring in the equivalent of Thailand's US$500 billion economy." What? How? People aren't just going to immediately get on a plane and come over here and just dump, 500 people aren't going to get on a plane and come over here and just dump a suitcase with a billion dollars in it a piece. I mean first off, how many super rich people are there? Of that subset, how many are going to be willing to buy this Visa, which I'll get into the terms of it of it here in a minute, then of that subset, how many of them are going to be here all the time spending money? I have got to imagine it's a pretty small number of people. Quoting further: "Thaksin said in his speech at the "Unlocking Thailand's Future" conference posted by Mcot Plc Thursday evening." Again, why is he touting all this stuff? He's not in the government, and this is talked about as if he is. Quoting further: "He suggested the country could attract 600,000 people who would deposit $1 million apiece for the Visa. In return they’d get rights to buy property in Thailand, helping the real estate sector, with the proceeds to fund education for Thai people." Well one, we have the LTR. We already have the LTR; we've seen the numbers. It's not that high, okay? It just isn't. We're not seeing these numbers. We've seen the O-X Visa in the past, the numbers on that are fairly low. And then we have got the standard retirees which the O Retirement Visa to this point, up until roughly two months ago when we started seeing all this nonsense with Banking crackdowns and the seeming issues with Immigration that stem from the banking crackdowns, understand these aren't Immigration policies, these are Bank policies that are having immigration outcomes. I've discussed in other videos, and I have discussed in the paid news service, again [email protected] if you want to get on the mailing list for that. That you can go to other banks that aren't imposing some of these more stringent banking protocols in order to get a bank account that allows you to get things like the O Retirement Visa. But we've had the O Retirement Visa for a long time and the O Retirement Visa I would argue is probably the easiest or has been the easiest most straightforward expat Retirement Visa, not just in Southeast Asia, but arguably throughout the world, okay? It requires basically not $25,000 roughly dollars be spent but just be held in a Thai Bank Account and then you get a one-year Visa that's renewable. And as long as you show up on time and renew it, it's just a cycle you just renew, rinse, repeat; renew, rinse, repeat. Have we got 600,000 people on that scheme? So what would lead us to believe that by creating a hundreds of thousands of dollar requirement to “buy into” this scheme, would bring in that number of people? I just don't see it, based on what we have seen in the stats and in the demographics to this point, okay?

Now secondly, getting to the issue of Thai land ownership, we saw this come up when the LTR was first promulgated; I believe that was back in 2021 they first started talking about it. It rolled out in earnest as we were coming out of COVID and all the restrictions round about 2022 and then we have had roughly going on 3 years now to see what the ramifications are of the LTR. But one thing that the LTR, that people still don't really understand, it has got an audit associated with it at the five-year mark. So we actually haven't seen the downside of the LTR yet because we haven't seen the first people that got the Visa go through the tax audit. I talked about that at the time. It is constantly played down; it's never mentioned. I did a previous video where I cited from the Bangkok Post them talking about the audit, so yeah, it's there. There's an audit associated with the five-year halfway mark on the LTR visas, it is worth pointing out. But that being said, again did we see anything like 600,000 people? No. Meanwhile, they talked about landownership at the time. I believe it was Anupong, then Interior Minister sort of touted that sort of floated that idea. Again, I said it then and I will say it again. I know this upsets a lot of foreigners, but I don't agree with Thailand selling out her land to foreign nationals and I don't care for how much money, especially in the present world of "money” we have in the post 1971 Nixon closing the gold window, and money now just being sort of “fiat currency” representative of a nation's debt, what is Thailand getting in return for selling out her land? It's just paper basically. Now it can be used for exchange purposes and things like that but is it worth selling out Thai land. And by the way, the name is on the door when you come into the country as to what country this is. It's Thailand. Land in Thailand is reserved for Thais, and I think that's worth pointing out, because again it seems like some folks can't seem to wrap their head around the notion that it should be reserved for Thais. Again I naturalized to Thai citizenship. People can claim I have the fervour of the converted but look, I have objectively looked at the West; I come from the West. I have seen the negative ramifications of selling out your own land to foreigners. There are many and myriad, just I mean I am not going to go into them all in detail in this video. I think it's beyond the scope of this, but if you have any questions about that, especially Thai policy makers, look to the West, look at what's going on in some of those jurisdictions where they have allowed foreigners to come in and buy property, to come in and buy land. Again the hesitance if you will, in fact in my opinion the lack of desire nationally on the part of wanting to sell land of foreigners comes from Thailand's experience in the old Colonial era when it had to fend for itself, fend off the Colonialist powers and maintain her own sovereignty and I think we have to continue to do that today and stop this nonsense of, "oh well if foreigners give us enough money, we will let them buy land." Why? What are we getting out of that as a country other than foreign fiat. It's not a one-to-one transaction; we are not getting the value of allowing foreigners land, property title in our country, we are not getting value exchange for that. So I have real questions about whether we need to even be continuing to explore this whole “wealthy foreigners fee”. So we have got plenty of those. We have got Elite, we've got Long Term Residence Visa, the so-called LTR Visa, which by the way isn't a Residence Visa, it's just like a really long Visa, it does not confer Lawful Permanent Residence in Thailand; I have discussed that in other videos. We also have, as I said, we have got Elite. There are other types of visas like the Smart Visa, that if you are investing in Thailand can provide a lot of benefits. There are plenty of visas out there without a new “wealthy foreigner” visa and we have already gotten into, I think it was even Jatuporn got into the issue of foreigners owning land and when it came up before in the context of the original proposal for the LTR Visa, that, “hey, this is Thailand. Land ownership should be reserved to Thais. I agree with that sentiment. Call me a nationalist if you want. That stated, it remains to be seen how this issue will play out, and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.