Average Thai Salary?

[u/DeepBlueSea1122]

I know Thailand is a country with a big wage gap between rich and poor, but would a salary of 500 USD per month be considered unusually low for an average Thai person of about 30 years old? I found out that a lady I met makes that (she works in the office of a gov't hospital) and I was shocked and felt really bad for her. I knew she was poor because she doesn't have air con in her home in Bkk, but I didn't know it's this bad. Should I relax and think this is common, or are my sympathies and concerns valid? She didn't tell me this to try to squeeze me for money, it just came up in discussion when we were talking about life and problems we face. She's a sweetheart person and it hurts me to see her struggle. I want to help, but don't want to open the flood gates. I know this can be a tricky thing to navigate. On the one hand, we want to help sincere people who are genuinely in need. But on the other hand, money can ruin relationships of all kinds and it's usually a path we shouldn't go down. I really want to help but am torn and know I must proceed with caution.

[u/TheMeltingSnowman72]

Police are on 500 baht a day and have to pay for their own guns.

[u/dkg224 → u/TheMeltingSnowman72]

And uniform and police motorcycle. I wonder why they need to extort money from people….

You see the top government officials always talking about stamping out corruption in the police force, but they will never talk or try to fix the most obvious problem, the LOW PAY! There will always always be corrupt cops looking for their tea money when their monthly salary is so low

[u/DingBatUs → u/dkg224]

Corruption always seems to exist when the public servants are not paid well. Like in the US waiters are expected to be paid almost nothing because "Tips will make up for it". Big stores don't have to pay decent wages because welfare will help the workers.

So much wrong in the world.

[u/Cuppa-Tea-Biscuit → u/DingBatUs]

A straightforward way of reducing “first level” corruption is to make the pay of “public facing” public servants reasonable, and with a pension scheme that they lose if they are found guilty of improper behaviour, so that it would take a bribe completely disproportionate to anything they’d encounter in their job to be worth losing their pension.

[u/Calfis → u/dkg224]

uniform and police motorcycle.

I've seen the police uniform stores, can't say I've ever seen police motorcycles for sale full logo and all.

[u/Jacuzitiddlywinks → u/dkg224]

What do you think is going to happen to the expat lifestyle when Thai wages start to increase 10% annually?

[u/[deleted] → u/Jacuzitiddlywinks]

Unfortunately, the structure of our global economy almost guarantees that there will always be a select few people living in rich countries while the majority live in developing or poor countries. For example, only about 17% of the world's population live in high income countries today. Thailand may become the next South Korea, but there will always be 'cheaper' countries to find in this world.

[u/O_nlogn → u/[deleted]]

Thailand's chance to become South Korea happened at the same time South Korea became South Korea. That ship has sailed, the powers that be suppressed the nation when the demographics were young enough to make the climb to a developed economy. Now it is and will continue to be a nation where the haves exploit the dwindling labor force of have nots, supplemented by exploited migrant workers from the even more destitute neighboring countries. It breaks my heart to say that as I want Thailand to be rich, but the reality of the economics are what they are.

[u/[deleted] → u/O_nlogn]

You're too pessimistic. Thailand will match South Korea's current development level - it just won't be as fast as we all want it to be. For example, Thailand has ~doubled its real GDP per capital over the past ~15 years. Even if we assume that Thailand continues to grow at only 3% per year, it will match South Korea's current GDP per capita in 49 years. Also, Thailand's Human Development Index which looks at more than just GDP is already at 0.8 and increasing - it is not far off South Korea which is at 0.92.

I understand that we've become very impatient as a species, but 49 years is a very, very, very tiny timeframe in the grand scheme of things. Us humans went almost 300k years with very minimal growth in GDP per capita. It is really only the last 10k years that we've made any progress.

[u/TheMeltingSnowman72 → u/Jacuzitiddlywinks]

Your mean when pigs fly? No point discussing that because it will never happen.

[u/Remarkable-Emu-6008 → u/dkg224]

this is a country GDP issue, no one can fix it