Thread: 42% of money deposited in commercials banks is owned by only 25,000 Thais

Centralised power 'keeps nation weak'
19/12/2010

SEKSAN URGES REFORM OF POLITICAL STRUCTURE TO NARROW WEALTH GAP

Decentralisation is the cure to the nation's ills, says Seksan Prasertkul, a former dean of Thammasat University's political science faculty.

The nation has come to a dead end in politics, and reform of the country's power structure is the only cure, he told a seminar at the university's Rangsit campus yesterday.

Centralisation of power is a major obstacle to development, he said. "Centralised power is expensive and only wealthy people can afford it.

Politics and elections are the preserve of the rich and influential," he said.
Centralisation has weakened society, including a civil sector now inactive in politics, he said.

Local administration organisations are incapable of caring for their communities. They rely on central government help but the central government cannot do the job alone, Mr Seksan said.

Development plans give priority to the industrial sector and ignore the agricultural sector. Misguided development results in big gaps between rich and poor, he said. The richest have up to 13 times more wealth than the poorest.

As much as 42% of money deposited in commercials banks is owned by only 25,000 Thais out of a population of more than 67 million.

With 70% of the country's assets held by the rich, who account for only 20% of the population, only influential and wealthy people can gain access to political power, Mr Seksan said.

While the political elite had continued to enjoy the privileges of exploiting their centralised political power to gain benefits from the nation's natural resources and share them only among themselves, about 1.5 million farmers did not even have ownership of their farmland, he said.

Mr Seksan suggested that the central government's economic development plan should be replaced by community development plans.

The government should only maintain its role of subsidising the local administrations' affairs, he said.

However, it was most important to ensure that local administration bodies would not simply adopt the centralisation philosophy of the central government. If that were to happen, centralisation would also occur at the local level, he said.

bangkokpost.com

I believe it is about the same in the US.

The top 1 percent: Americans who earned an adjusted gross income of $410,096 or more accounted for 22.8 percent of all wages. But they paid 40.4 percent of total reported income taxes, an increase from 39.9 percent in 2006, according to the IRS.

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has fok all to do with bank deposits

Keeping US Dollars in the bank is a guaranteed loss. Spend them while you can still got something for them. The future of the Dollar and the Country that prints (and prints and prints) it is not looking very good these days.

On the US:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

Those are from:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA

More stats there if you like.

Thailand must be even worse when it comes to the wealth gap. I wonder if they actually check the names on all those accounts to see if among those 25,000 there aren't accounts for the same people? Most wealthier Thai people I know seem to have multiple accounts here and there and multiple homes etc.

Originally Posted by Mid

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has fok all to do with bank deposits

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And bank deposits have 'fok all' to do with wealth.

This is a fact in many countries, 80-90% of total assets/wealth belongs to 1% of the population, you can find this statistic in most countries, not surprising really.

Originally Posted by Mid

Seksan Prasertkul, a former dean of Thammasat University's political science faculty.

The nation has come to a dead end in politics, and reform of the country's power structure is the only cure.

As much as 42% of money deposited in commercials banks is owned by only 25,000 Thais out of a population of more than 67 million.

Politics don't work and the power structure must be changed.
There's 25,000 of them and 66,975,000 of you.
Insightful or inciting?

Originally Posted by Mid

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has fok all to do with bank deposits

still a wealth measurement.

Originally Posted by ItsRobsLife

Originally Posted by Mid

Seksan Prasertkul, a former dean of Thammasat University's political science faculty.

The nation has come to a dead end in politics, and reform of the country's power structure is the only cure.

As much as 42% of money deposited in commercials banks is owned by only 25,000 Thais out of a population of more than 67 million.

Politics don't work and the power structure must be changed.
There's 25,000 of them and 66,975,000 of you.
Insightful or inciting?

I agree but a lot will die , but a better Thailand will come out of it all.

Those 25,000 Thai bread winners are simply more productive. The truth hurts.

The Pareto principle clearly at work although the percentages are even more extreme in this case.

However, Thailand's essentially feudal system will ensure that this grotesquely uneven wealth distribution will continue to prevail.

Corruption, nepotism and cronyism are potent weapons in the Establishment's arsenal against which the economically subjugated have no defence.

History dictates that such a status quo can only be challenged by organised confrontation but as most cognoscenti will agree the Thai lack the social maturity to grapple with such a concept.

Altruism, social equality attained by merit and a will to succeed through the application of industry are still quite alien virtues and in the Thai body politic they are currently unlikely antibodies to the Chinese virus.