쉐도잉 연습: THAILAND IS (kinda) OVER!!! - YouTube로 영어 말하기 배우기
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Hi, I'm a fat little Asian man, and this is Thailand.
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Hi, I'm a fat little Asian man, and this is Thailand.
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Chances are, you've been there before, with more than 30 million tourists visiting each year.
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Walking through Bangkok, it feels like a city that will never slow down.
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Street food carts at 2am, all the classic Bangkok heavy traffic, temples in the middle of the city, and of course, nightlife districts choke full of crowds.
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It is one of the most crowded feeling cities on earth.
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So it really feels like the last place to be going through a demographic issue.
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But yeah, Thailand is the newest member of the Asian population crisis gang.
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For decades now, Thailand's fertility rate has been in steady decline, their total population decreasing recently.
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It was just hidden by all the extreme examples out there.
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In just 20 years, the Thailand we know and love just might be a lot different.
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On the outside, Thailand is kind of the last country you'd really expect a population crisis to be happening.
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When you think of a population crisis, you think South Korea, Japan, or urban China.
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It's a topic that screams more 70-hour workweek, hyper-competitive culture, and deep depression.
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But yeah, it's true.
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In 2025, Thailand's fertility rate officially hit below 1.0, and it's estimated to be around 0.87 right now.
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Actually rivals South Korea, which is honestly very impressive.
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Much lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a population.
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2 replacing the parents and the 0.1 accounting for accidents.
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Having a 0.87 fertility rate basically means every 100 people in a generation will have an average of 43 kids.
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Those kids will grow up to have 19 and those 19 will have 8.
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So in just around 80 years, a family tree will go from 100 people to just 8.
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Even with a negative outlook, there is a population crisis in the making.
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In a few decades, it seems the busy streets of Thailand may one day be only full of tourists.
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Not only is Thailand's population in decline after peaking at 66 million, it's also aging.
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Taking a look at the population pyramid shows that there's half as much 1-year-olds as there are 60-year-olds.
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Currently, over 20% of the population is over 60 years old, and 30% will be in 15 years.
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It won't help that the population decreasing will most likely result in long-term economic recessions, making it even more difficult for people to survive day to day.
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But at this point though, I'm sure some of you are asking, why is this video about Thailand?
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People not wanting kids is just a global trend, and there are so much more extreme cases.
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Why is Thailand's case so special?
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Well, to put it bluntly, Thailand isn't rich enough to be going through a population crisis.
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Of course, nobody can truly afford a population crisis, but Thailand can't afford it right now.
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Even though Thailand's population speedrun isn't as fast like the top rankers, Thailand will be in crisis much sooner.
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In a society, it's considered sustainable if 3-4 working-age people support one elderly person through taxes or direct support.
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With the Thai population having a 20% age society, it means roughly 3 will be supporting one elderly.
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Three people.
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That must mean the status quo must be manageable, right?
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Nope.
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The system is already cracking beneath the pressure.
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As of 2026, Thailand's household debt has climbed to 86.7% of debt-to-GDP ratio, the third highest in Asia.
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That's a lot of debt.
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But it isn't the amount that's the problem, it's what kind of debt it is.
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Unlike Hong Kong or South Korea, where debt is mostly mortgages or business loans, Thailand's household debt is mostly personal consumption loans.
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It's not debt that generates future wealth, it's debt for surviving, like buying groceries or paying the bills.
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It doesn't help that 95% of Thai households are in debt for multiple generations too.
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Those three people supporting that one elderly person, their backs are already about to break.
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Imagine what it'll be like 15 years later when it's two people for one elderly.
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It will simply be too much of a burden for the already strained population, something that they aren't ready for at all.
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If you take a look at Japan, the oldest of them all, their population is already at roughly two workers for every one retiree.
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But they've had 30 years to deal and prepare with this issue.
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From 2000, everyone over 40 has been paying into a mandatory long-term insurance fund to socialize the cost of supporting the elderly.
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It funds Japan's massive elder care industry, used to support massage robots and exoskeletons.
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There's also a large push by the government for senior citizens to rejoin the workforce.
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Not only do over half of citizens work till 70, Japan is considering raising their retirement age.
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Not because people want to, but because finances and pensions are getting tighter.
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It's a countrywide grind with a painfully sluggish economy, but it's still holding out.
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All this is basically possible because Japan's rich.
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Japan's massive economy, deep capital reserves with corporations that generate revenue all make these reforms and prep possible.
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And if you take a look at the speedrunner leaderboard, all of them are also pretty rich like Japan.
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Thailand though just doesn't have the money to buy more time and preparation.
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At an average monthly income of $450, taxing workers enough to build a meaningful elder care fund would leave people unable to function.
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The math just doesn't work at this income level.
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It only works once you're rich.
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The crisis is almost here, but Thailand has to face it on a fraction of Japan's budget.
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There's also difference in industries too.
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South Korea and Taiwan are global tech superpowers, and Singapore is the financial and wealth management center of Asia.
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These industries generate massive wealth per employee and have the capital to aggressively invest in automation and AI.
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Even in a demographic freefall, these countries are scrambling to build a high-tech safety net, something that you just can't build without money.
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So what's going on here?
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How did Thailand become like this?
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Well, it's all because of something called the middle income trap.
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To understand what that even is, we have to look at the go-to guide on developing a country.
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Usually, most countries start off with agriculture with a large surplus of people.
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Use that cheap labor to build basic stuff, t-shirts, shoes, and weird toys.
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Then use the revenue to educate your workforce, build cities with infrastructure, and attract high-tech forward investment.
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At some point, you'll level up enough to start transitioning from basic manufacturing to doing highly profitable stuff like research, engineering, and tech.
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It's what Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all did, and what Thailand was aiming for as well.
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It's just that they've been trapped in the middle part, relying on legacy manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture for almost 30 years now, not being able to move on.
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Thailand started off like most Asian countries, exporting rice.
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But they had a massive advantage.
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They were the only ones not going through some kind of chaotic crisis in the region.
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Plus, they were also the only non-communist country in the region when the U.S.
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was afraid of the domino effect, leading to some nice military and financial investments.
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Thailand strategized on those advantages.
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The country rebranded itself as a retreat for over thousands of U.S.
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soldiers during the Vietnam War to use their combat pay.
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The fundamentals of Thailand's tourism, relaxing massages, good food, and nightlife districts were made to cater to those US forces.
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But it was a system that worked because even after the soldiers left, more tourists came.
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Tourism is a good steady source of income, but it's also really good at attracting foreign investment.
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To an investor, Thailand being the friendly land of smiles is a lot better than, well, literally anywhere else in the region during the time.
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Infrastructure needed for tourism, good airports, reliable electricity, high-end hotels are also what foreign investors look for before investing in a country.
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And that is what happened.
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In 1985, Japan was in bit of a crisis.
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The Japanese yen had skyrocketed, making local manufacturing super expensive.
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Corporations scrambled to find a new and cheap place to build all their stuff.
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The Thai government basically rolled out the red carpet, introducing tax breaks and industrial zones, attracting all that sweet Japanese cash.
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Just like that, Thailand became the undisputed goat of Southeast Asia.
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They successfully went from selling rice to becoming a center of manufacturing, making electronic and automobile parts instead of plastic toys.
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Their economy was growing at a blistering 8 to 10% a year, and everything seemed like it was right on track.
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But it wasn't.
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Using its newfound investments, the Thai government poured billions into developing deep sea ports, massive industrial parks, and chemical plants.
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They just forgot to train people to work on them.
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The education system stayed mostly the same, catering to agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing instead of leveling up for research and development.
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The money that was supposed to be used for R&D was instead being lent out to build luxury condos and golf courses.
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Everything seemed okay because Thailand was rich with foreign cash, so the banks kept lending and lending to real estate, essentially pumping into a massive bubble.
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That same bubble, however, would pop into the 1997 Asian financial crisis when hedge funds realized that the Thai bot was overvalued and attacked it, causing the currency to collapse.
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To survive the economy breaking overnight, Thailand had to call in the IMF for a $17 billion bailout.
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No one gives you $17 billion without thousands of brutal strings attached, and Thailand was about to experience its new biggest trauma.
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Initially, the financial sector was wiped out, with 56 out of 58 major finance companies liquidated permanently, meaning all the finance bros were left without a job.
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With the banks out of money, factories could no longer get short-term loans to buy raw materials to make products.
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Malls, restaurants, and small businesses closed as nobody had any money to buy anything.
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All the workers were fired from the economy collapsing.
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Many were mostly migrants from poor rural communities.
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And when jobs vanished overnight, over a million people had to reverse migrate back home.
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The underdeveloped farms in poor regions simply couldn't handle all those people coming in all at once, straining these communities immensely.
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The scars of the crisis was deep.
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When formal jobs vanished overnight, millions have to step into the unregulated informal economy like part-time gigs, street vending, and of course, prostitution.
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It also meant commercial banks stopped lending to these people.
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Many people had to turn to loan sharks charging high interest just to keep their families from starving.
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Remember all that high household debt?
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Well, it mostly originates from this period.
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Yeah, it was a massive disaster, but what really prevented Thailand from recovering was something different.
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You see, the Thai economy was essentially controlled by the old guard, this tight-knit alliance between the military and some old money billionaires.
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Together, they made this huge monopoly on everything.
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Politics, beer, retail, telecom, and agriculture.
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They didn't really need to innovate and were of course more interested in just keeping their power.
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It's why they didn't invest in the education program.
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They just wanted money the easy way, through monopolies and real estate.
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And they wanted no new risks.
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It's why Thailand's economic development was extremely unequal, focused mostly on Bangkok and its elites.
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The financial crisis, however, was a massive failure for the old guard.
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with all the mess creating a giant power vacuum.
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That vacuum was filled in by this guy, Thaksun Shinawad, the beginning of Thailand's massive political struggle.
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He catered towards the working class that had never actually benefited from the economic boom promising universal healthcare and debt relief.
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His story as a middle-class police officer made telecom billionaire was a hopeful image during the financial crisis, which the rural and working class voters loved him for handing him a historic landslide victory.
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Tuxin was set to build a political machine that didn't need the old guard at all and they were not happy about it.
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The old guard was desperate for any excuse to take him down and Tuxin handed it to them on a silver platter.
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He sold his billion dollar company off but paid zero taxes due to some loopholes.
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The people took to the streets to protest which the military seized the opportunity to shoo him out claiming to protect the country from corruption.
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The thing was, the rural working class was absolutely enraged that he was kicked out, which began this new whack-a-mole period where toxin proxies would get elected, then the military would just kick them out on repeat over and over.
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Yeah, it was a mess after mess of coups and constitutional rewrites.
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This mess was ultimately why Thailand became stuck.
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Foreign investors hate uncertainty.
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There's no point investing in a 10-year-long project with power grids and water supplies if the rules change every year and the streets are constantly being flooded with protests.
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All this political instability basically meant that Thailand lost all the waves of high-tech foreign investment during the 2000s and the 2010s.
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Instead, all that money went to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, which started to recover from their own affairs and offer political stability and an upskilling workforce.
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But why is all this so important to not having kids.
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Well, let's take a look at the hypothetical middle-class life in Thailand.
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Mee Nong.
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She's 26, grew up in Chiang Mai, and worked hard enough to land a decent job at a mid-sized company in Bangkok.
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On paper, she's made it, but her salary mostly goes to rent in a city that's gotten more expensive.
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And every month, she sends money back home because her parents are still working off-debt they took on back in the late 90s,
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and that $20 state pension isn't helping In this situation, even if you did want kids, wanting them feels almost irresponsible given everything.
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So most people just don't.
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Nong isn't just a statistic, she's why the numbers look the way it does.
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While all the billionaires, the military,
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and the courts were scrambling over the wheel the passengers in the back aka the people of thailand were getting completely crushed the
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global standard of stagnant wages but higher cost of living is here of course but being middle income trapped means there's not
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enough formal middle class office jobs being created yeah a staggering 55 of the population is still in the informal economy
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with zero safety net no pensions and no credit no wonder why so many thai households are still in debt especially the elderly imagine you're
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working in thailand you're in debt to survive with all the inflation going on but you also need to take care of your parents with their debt
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especially if you don't want to see them hauling heavy carts in the thailand summer heat most people definitely can't afford the thought of having kids especially now that they're destined to live the same lives as their parents
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and even if you somehow managed to get a degree in like software engineering you'll probably end up working abroad or in
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hotel managing it's not like the people of thailand didn't even try they've been protesting for years the peak being in 2021
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when the youth showed up in massive numbers to protest against their stolen future they rallied against the new party that promised actual change get rid rid of the monopolies, reform the education system, and push the military out of politics.
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And just like that, the future Ford Party seemed like it would be the new hope that Thailand needed.
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It's just that one of the many military constitution rewrites barred the party from taking office, and later the party was just dissolved entirely.
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The message was loud and clear.
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Even if you follow the rules, you won't get to decide anything.
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And here's the thing about having your hope systematically dismantled.
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It makes people angry and calculating.
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When people see a party win fair and square, then get dissolved for complete BS, not once but twice by the way, the lesson isn't try harder next time, the lesson is to just stop playing.
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Having children is a bet that the future will be better than the present.
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But when the world tells you your child will live the same broken and corrupt economy that wasn't built for them, what's the point?
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The population collapse and the political chaos aren't two separate stories.
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They're the same story about not being able to make the decisions for your own future.
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Meanwhile, the government that did take power was kind of screwed.
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They knew Thailand needed deep structural changes, but that was never going to happen.
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All they could do was hand out stimulus checks, which is like slapping a band-aid on a severe head trauma.
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Recently, they're reattempting their 70s economic miracle, Trying to seize the Chinese foreign investment, their plan is to make Thailand the electric vehicle center of the world.
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Rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese EV companies like BYD to build factories in Thailand.
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Same as 40 years ago with the same 40-year-old mistakes too.
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They're trying to play a 20th century strategy to solve a 21st century crisis.
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You can build all the EV mega factories you want.
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A factory is not going to be of much use if there is no one left to work inside it.
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The middle income trap isn't the only cause of Thailand's problems, but the unchanging corruption, criminal organizations, and deep inequalities are all linked to it.
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The country itself refuses to change despite the people's wants and needs, shown by the low voter turnout of this year's elections.
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Thailand's demographic problem may be part of the global trend of not having kids, but it's also a bill that's coming due, and the people who will pay it aren't the ones who ran up the tab.
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It won't be the old guard billionaires whose monopolies fueled the entire system.
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It won't be the military generals who rewrote constitutions every time the wrong person won.
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It won't be the courts that dissolve political parties because it threatened the wrong interests.
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It'll be the millions of Thai people trying to live their everyday lives, already stretched thin supporting aging parents, already priced out of the future they were promised.
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They didn't create this trap, they were born into it.
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The global trend of people not wanting kids is real, but to just call Thailand a trend is kind of a gross oversimplification for the millions living with the reality they didn't create.
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so it would be a big help if you subscribe.
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Thank you so much for watching, here's some other content that you may like.
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주요 어휘 및 표현
- fertility rate: 출생률
- demographic issue: 인구 문제
- population crisis: 인구 위기
- household debt: 가계 부채
- support one elderly person: 한 노인을 부양하다
- personal consumption loans: 개인 소비 대출
- surviving: 생존하다
- economic recession: 경제 침체
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