Thai populist subsidies prices Thai rice out of competition, Thai farmers suffer

[The Mikado]

http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Story/A1Story20120726-361477.html

Oh, the Thaksinites. 

Rice industry, already lost the title of world's top exporter to India, is heading for disaster in the next few years due to a lack of proper strategic management of the rice-pledging scheme and the country's exports, the Thai Rice Exporters Association said yesterday.

As of July 10, India had eclipsed Thailand as the world's largest rice exporter, with year-to-date overseas shipments of 3.61 million tonnes.

Thai exports in the period slumped by 45.8 per cent to 3.6 million tonnes, while Vietnam is breathing down the Kingdom's neck in third place with an impressive 3.52 million tonnes.

This is the first time in half a century that Thailand has lost its position as top rice-exporting nation.

Association president Korbsook Iamsuri said the government should neither rely on the unexpected, such as competitor nations finding themselves faced with a tough export situation, nor spend a huge budget on pledging without proper concern for the trading situation.

If the government continues on the current path, "the Thai rice industry will soon collapse, as trading would be in limbo, while farmers would face a domino effect and be unable to sell their rice because of millers being faced with excess stocks", she said.

"And the government would lack the funds to continue its subsidisation of the next few crops."

The Pheu Thai Party (successor to Thai Rak Thai) decided on a populist policy of subsidizing rice to better pay the rice-growers, heedlessly ignoring warnings that that policy would price Thai rice out of competition.  As a result, for the first time in 100 years, Thailand is no longer the #1 rice exporter in the world, falling behind India and possibly Vietnam.  Coupled with last year's flooding, this makes for two years in a row of subpar rice sales and a bunch of broke farmers all over Thailand.

[opebo]

We can only hope they are removed from power somehow.  I don't care about the rice, but I do care about certain of their other policy tendencies (anti-fun).

[asexual trans victimologist]

Screw fun. It's boring as hell.

Agricultural subsidies are incredibly hard to get right, and Pheu Thai doesn't seem to have any idea what it's doing here.

[RogueBeaver]

Thaksinites: Way to screw the agricultural sector dumbasses.

[opebo]

Screw fun. It's boring as hell.

Perhaps, but the key is it is less boring than everything else.

Right now the rubes are riding high in high politics, one can only hope they will soon get a proper comeuppance.  The old man still lives and as far as anyone can tell he's in better health than he was a couple of years ago.  

[Torie]

Yes, a good way to reduce exports is for the government to pay you more for a product than you can get exporting it. Who knew? 

[So the Heroes Fall]

Oh man. I wonder how this will be spun by the Thaksin defenders who kept insisting the opposition* was fascist.

*Something I noticed a couple weeks ago is that the US Democratic Party and Thai Democrat Party share something else in common besides a similar name: Both belong to the same international affiliation.

[opebo]

Oh man. I wonder how this will be spun by the Thaksin defenders who kept insisting the opposition* was fascist.

*Something I noticed a couple weeks ago is that the US Democratic Party and Thai Democrat Party share something else in common besides a similar name: Both belong to the same international affiliation.

Yeah they're both standard liberal parties - liberal in the European sense.  In Thailand liberalism and social tolerance generally militates towards a somewhat anti-democratic stance, hence the friendly relationship between the Democrat party here and the monarchy and army. 

[Gustaf]

Oh man. I wonder how this will be spun by the Thaksin defenders who kept insisting the opposition* was fascist.

*Something I noticed a couple weeks ago is that the US Democratic Party and Thai Democrat Party share something else in common besides a similar name: Both belong to the same international affiliation.

So, if I get your logic right it works like this:

Party A supports state intervention in markets.

Party B opposes Party A.

Hence, Party B cannot be fascist.

Surely, your above post is incredibly stupid even by your standards?

[So the Heroes Fall]

No I'm just saying this illustrates why the opposition are better.

[Gustaf]

No I'm just saying this illustrates why the opposition are better.

That's not what you said. You said that this somehow would prove the opposition not to be fascist. Which is retarded. Of course, both sides in Thai politics are bad. No one ever contested that.

It's also amusing that you are suddenly such a free-marketer. One might almost think that your enthusiastic support for the Thai reactionaries was not based on any ideological analysis.

[The Mikado]

No I'm just saying this illustrates why the opposition are better.

That's not what you said. You said that this somehow would prove the opposition not to be fascist. Which is retarded. Of course, both sides in Thai politics are bad. No one ever contested that.

It's also amusing that you are suddenly such a free-marketer. One might almost think that your enthusiastic support for the Thai reactionaries was not based on any ideological analysis.

What Gustaf said.  It's one thing to recognize that Thaksin was a huckster and a con artist who sold the Thai people a bill of goods and that Thaksin's followers are demagogues who would be wiling to drive their country into the ground while trying to appeal to populist concerns, but isn't democracy fundamentally all about the right of people to put in a government of demagogues?  If the Democrats want to retake power in Thailand, the answer is obvious: get out there in the rice paddies and steal Thai Rak Thai and its successors' electioneering tactics rather than sneering at them from Bangkok and overthrowing the government every two years.

EDIT:  Until that happens, expect Thai politics to continue in its ridiculous vicious cycle.

1.  People elect Thaksinites, they horrify the establishment with their complete lack of knowledge about...well...anything
2.  Military overthrows civilian government
3.  Military allows civilian government back under the condition they don't elect Thaksinites.
4.  People elect Thaksinites.

[opebo]

...but isn't democracy fundamentally all about the right of people to put in a government of demagogues?

Yes of course, and thus, I prefer other certain other systems over democracy.    

If the Democrats want to retake power in Thailand, the answer is obvious: get out there in the rice paddies and steal Thai Rak Thai and its successors' electioneering tactics rather than sneering at them from Bangkok and overthrowing the government every two years.

No, the point is they want good governance- not the populist train wreck that would be required to be elected democratically.  So, the way they have been doing it is better in context - so far.  I don't deny that the downward spiral into mass rule seems to be in the cards - after all every other ancien régime has fallen - but not yet.  In Thailand, not yet. 

1.  People elect Thaksinites, they horrify the establishment with their complete lack of knowledge about...well...anything
2.  Military overthrows civilian government
3.  Military allows civilian government back under the condition they don't elect Thaksinites.
4.  People elect Thaksinites.

We can only hope!  I mean that the step 2 can continue to be repeated (subsequent elimination of step 3 is apparently too much to hope for) forever.  Alas, that which saves us here is hundreds of years old, and I fear, will one day soon succumb as well- it is like trying to hold back dynamite with a lace curtain.