OECD Pushes Welfare-State Policies on Thailand

July 25, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Hong Kong used to be a role model for good economic policy, but China’s crackdown has had a negative effect, so Singapore is now considered the jurisdiction with the most economic freedom.

But I also like to cite Taiwan, which is a top-20 nation for economic liberty.

Especially if the alternative is Thailand, which only ranks #65.

Unsurprisingly, differences in economic freedom translate to differences in per-capita GDP. Here’s a chart based on the Maddison database.

One reason for the big gap is that Thailand has a bigger burden of government spending.

This second chart utilizes IMF data to compare the three nations.

Looking at these two charts, one obvious conclusion is that Thailand should reduce the burden of government spending.

It makes sense, after all, to mimic the policies of nations that are much richer.

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development must have flunked Econ 101.

The Paris-based bureaucracy just published a report that explicitly urges the Thai government to increase taxes and spending.

I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts.

 

Thailand has made significant progress in expanding its social protection system in recent years, but there is scope to further expand coverage and increase benefit levels. …spending on social protection (excluding healthcare) is only 2.1% of gross domestic product (GDP), which remains low in international comparison… Additional public spending requires increasing Thailand’s tax-to-GDP ratio… 

Raising more tax revenues will require reform across a wide range of direct and indirect taxes. There is scope to increase the standard value added tax (VAT) rate (currently at 7%)… The role of the personal income tax could be strengthened… Further, the dividend withholding tax rate could be increased. …the ceiling on social security contributions…could be raised to increase the contributions from higher incomes.

For those keeping score, the OECD wants more income tax revenue, more payroll tax revenue, and more value-added tax revenue.

And if you read the entire report, they want more energy taxes, more excise taxes, and other taxes as well.

Here’s the OECD’s list of recommendations.

We may as well call this the turn-Thailand-into-France recipe.

Except France became a (relatively) rich nation when government was very small and then made the mistake of adopting an expensive welfare state.

The OECD wants Thailand to adopt a costly welfare state today, which means the country (notwithstanding absurd OECD analysis) will never become rich.

To make matters worse, the OECD is subsidized by money from American taxpayers. So I’m helping to pay for terrible advice that will hurt the people of Thailand.

P.S. Adding insult to injury, OECD bureaucrats get tax-free salaries. So those hypocrites push tax increases on everyone else while being insulated from suffering any real-world consequences.

P.P.S. To be fair, the OECD wants all nations to have higher taxes and bigger welfare states, so it’s not selectively attacking Thailand.

Another Nail In the Global Warming Coffin

October 22, 2023 by John Hinderaker

Statistics Norway, the government agency that produces official statistics for that country, released a report last month titled “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” The report concludes:

[T]he results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.

The report looks at the last 400,000+ years of Earth’s climate history:.............To Read More....

The Climate is Indeed Changing – Grab a Warm Jacket - October 31, 2023 By Brian C. Joondeph -  Over the past few years, we have been lectured to by professed scientists to “follow the science,” echoed by the corporate media that often sees financial gain in following particular views of science.  For example, Pfizer is alleged to sponsor 15 television news shows, a sure fire way to get their version of “the science” (and their products) out to the masses............Or Steve Kirsch’s recent unsettling analysis, “The data is clear and consistent. The COVID vaccine killed 3.5X as many people as the COVID virus.”\  What are other examples of science morphing into propaganda? How about global warming, a.k.a. climate change?...........

Thailand’s tiger turnaround contradicts climate fearmongering - October 31, 2023 By Vijay Jayaraj - Thailand’s protected forest areas are home to the Indochinese tiger, known by its biological name Panthera tigris corbetti. Recent population numbers suggest that the tiger is making a comeback. Tiger populations in two of Thailand’s wildlife sanctuaries grew from 42 in 2012 to about 100 in 2022. The resurgence is one more conservation success story that defies the climate-obsessed mainstream media's doomsday narrative, which has been blaming anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for real and fabricated declines in animal numbers and even outright extinctions.,,,,,,,,,,,, 

 Another day, another climate ‘tipping point’  - October 31, 2023 By Jack Hellner - Dozens of scientists say we have hit the tipping point… again. It is amazing how often we’ve hit this tipping point, yet things don’t seem to be as dire as “they” predicted. From CNN via Yahoo News:

Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries.

Then, former climate scientist at NASA James Hansen said it is far worse than he originally anticipated in 1988:............

China Sold Thailand Submarines That Lack Engines

Beijing is trying to make up for it with old boats only fit for training

Anders Corr March 17, 2022

 

Thailand is buying submarines that it doesn’t need from China, and China has no engines to put in them. How could this happen?  Perhaps the Thai navy got bad advice. Perhaps Thai officials got paid off by the Chinese—it is one of Beijing’s favorite strategies when signing contracts for billions of dollars around the world.

Whatever happened, China sold Thailand something it couldn’t deliver: Chinese submarines with German engines. When Germany’s engine maker, MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH, refused to provide the engines due to European Union sanctions from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, Beijing realized it had to provide something else, or lose the Thai contract and its own pride.......Thai citizens should take notice. European citizens should take notice. Americans, Australians, Filipinos, and Taiwanese should take notice. Beijing, which likely egged Russian President Vladimir Putin on in his invasion of Ukraine, is up to no good when it encourages an arms race in Southeast Asia...........To Read More....