"Income gap widens, sows dissent in Thailand; Nation’s growth increasing tension" by Andrew Higgins, Washington Post | June 13, 2010
NONBON, Thailand — “Life is definitely getting worse,’’ said the 62-year-old farmer, grumbling about the price of gasoline, school fees, and a political and economic system he sees as rigged in favor of the rich.
What do you know, you have something in common with the Thai protesters, America.
You didn't spend two months in the streets, though, before the CIA gave up on you.
Last month, San and six friends from this village in northeastern Thailand piled into a pickup and drove 14 hours to join “Red Shirt’’ protests in Bangkok. During nine weeks of demonstrations, scores of other rural folk from Nonbon and nearby settlements made the same 390-mile trip.
Beneficiaries of an economic boom that, in just three decades, has cut the proportion of Thais living below the poverty line from 42 percent to about 8 percent, San and his family represent both the promise and the peril of Asia’s dizzying transformation.
But somehow they are restless and.... oh, STINKOLA!!!!
From China in the north to Indonesia in the south, hundreds of millions of people are now living far better than a generation ago. But the gap that separates them from the rich has often grown wider.
You know, BUT WHAT, MSM?
In this nation it is given the old RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL BOATS bit as the YAWNING GAP in wealth is the MOST DISPARATE on the PLANET!
As their fortunes and expectations have risen, so too has their frustration. And, as recent turmoil in Thailand has shown, this can mean big trouble.
Oh, I get it now; this is your CIA PRESS COVER STORY for the failed coup attempt.
San and his neighbors rallied to the Red Shirts not because they are hungry, uninformed, and desperate but because they are no longer any of those things.
That simply does NOT PASS the SMELL TEST, dear readers.
Though still very poor compared with Bangkok residents who cheered the Red Shirts’ defeat when government troops moved in on May 19, they are a better off, better-informed, and far more demanding voice in national affairs than their elders.
I'm sorry, but MY NEWSPAPER made it seem like the WHOLE COUNTRY was UNITED against the government!! What do you mean
San buys and reads a newspaper every day....
I'm sorry, that is NOT HELPING HIM, MSM.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing, but newspapers." -- Thomas Jefferson
And look what it has done to me with my sad potty-mouth of condemnations and angry and frustrated screams of agony that this is the news from New England's largest newspaper.
Thailand’s income inequality is roughly the same as that of much poorer nations such as Uganda and Cambodia, and slightly worse than that of China and the United States.
Translation: Their society is the same as any other you will find the world.
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