Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of the video suggests, we are discussing Retirement Visas and Destination Thailand Visas. I have done some videos here recently; I am critical of the DTV across the board. I think it was poorly designed; I think it was designed for immediate political benefit with no thought to the long-term ramifications and implications of it. I do think it is ultimately not the greatest thing for Thailand. 

That said, I am not against people that have it. I think people think I have some personal beef with people that went and got it. Depending on the circumstances, if I had first come here to Thailand and learned of it, I might have availed myself of it. Depending on the circumstances in a given individual’s case, it may be a good visa for them. That being said, as a program, I don't see where the benefits really outweigh the costs to the country generally; that is just sort of my personal opinion. 

Now that said, in some prior videos we made, I found a comment, quoting directly: "What is the purpose of the Retirement Visas? Are they not using infrastructure also? What are they bringing in other than a meagre pension where they meticulously spend it? I'd argue true DTV holders contribute more to the Thai economy than the retired or short-term tourists, as a DTV holder is still earning money and would be living/spending in a day-to-day mentality unlike a "how do I stay within my budget" mentality of a fixed pensioner or the two-week tourist?”  Well a couple of things there. One, the whole issue of work authorization is not hammered out. That is one of the opaque issues associated with the DTV that I also have an issue with is it basically makes a mockery of in many ways, the labour certifications that are required to people who actually do work here; that is kind of my problem with it. Again it is part of this, they just kind of made this up and it was largely the byproduct of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which has no business within the bailiwick of Interior Thailand where you are dealing with things like work authorization. Now again, that may be the critique of somebody who lives here and sort of understands the different roles that the different Ministries play and how one, who has nothing to do with the role of the other, probably really should not be chiming in on that other Ministry's bailiwick but okay let's leave that aside. 

As to the issue though of who contributes what, it's hard to say. The biggest problem with the DTV is again in its conception, it is this nebulous thing. People really aren't supposed to be working here but if they have some abroad function that they are performing, they are not going to get upset about it, but then they can't have banking facilities here, nor work authorization or anything of that nature. Again, it's not the people that are using it, I want to be clear on that, I don't have any problem with those folks. I have a problem with just bad policy that then gets translated into frankly just a really unorganized and for lack of a better term jankety system that results in a lot of videos getting put out by people who feel like they have been sort of burned because they believed the DTV was one thing, and it ultimately didn't work out to be the way that they thought it was, when meanwhile, there really are other visas that are more straightforward. Again, I'm not begrudging the people using them; that's not the point of any of these videos. It's just there could be a more streamlined way of doing this where rather than just leaving it all sort of out in the ether, and then it leads to a situation where some people just manage to coast along and basically not get noticed and have no problems, while other people run into genuine problems based on promulgated Thai Law and then when they get into issues, there is a backlash online from it, and it makes Thailand look bad. That's basically my big issue.

Now as for contributions, well I would argue in terms, there is also a whole thing on this where what do DTV holders actually contribute to Thai GDP? Because again ostensibly, nothing they do “impinges” upon the Thai economy so whatever contributions they are making to GDP, are being made in whatever country they are contributing in in terms of their work contributions if they are working. And then meanwhile, yeah look, retirees actually have to dump money into Thailand via the banking system in order to continue their status.  

So in terms of pure GDP, and let me be clear, in other videos I have been critical of GDP as a metric, I don't think it's the end-all-be-all metric, but it is useful in this instance when you are comparing one set of foreign nationals in Thailand to another, in the GDP context you can at least say, well retirees actually do directly contribute to GDP, as opposed to folks that are just here in this nebulous status and nobody can really count them as one thing or the other. Again I don't have any problem with people using the DTV, that's not my point. I just don't like bad policy being executed and resulting in bad outcomes especially for the image of the Kingdom of Thailand.