Sideshow
Here is a challenge for the English language blogs here in Taiwan: Write something about economic inequality in Taiwan without getting sidetracked by the blue/green political sideshow.
What exactly does the bottom of Taiwanese society look like? According to the 2005 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (九四年家庭收支調查報告) published in August by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, last year the income of the poorest 20 percent of households had decreased by 9 percent since 1999, primarily because wages had plummeted 19.8 percent over that six-year period.
Fundamental changes are taking place in Taiwanese society, and while I support a vibrant Taiwanese democracy, it isn’t clear to me that either party has much to say about this topic. It is clear that the political bloggers here really love this country and care a lot about local politics, but politics isn’t always about what is happening on the front pages of the newspapers …
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
You left out the historical lack of a strong labor movement in Taiwan. (Brad DeLong has a roundup of some recent debate on the topic in the US blogsphere.) But I’m not suggesting that political bloggers become economists. Perhaps I didn’t make this clear, but I think the problem is that these issues shouldn’t be treated as separate from the political ones people are already discussing. Politics isn’t just “he-said, she-said” … although I do appreciate that kind of analysis as well, when it is done well.
[…] I know many pro-Green English language bloggers will not like some of what they read on Interlocals, but I’m glad to be getting a greater variety of opinions in the English language blogsphere. {Translation, Global Voices Online, Interlocals, Chinese, blogs, 中文, 台灣} […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
I blogged on it before, back in August.
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2006/08/household-incomes-stagnant.html
I am not sure why incomes are falling relatively, but I suspect it is some mix of (1) corporate capitalism — corporations being devices for concentrating wealth at the top (2) rising corporate share of production driving #1 even further (3) move of industry to China, leaving poorer paying service jobs and taking productive talent overseas along with productive re-investment in the economy (4) insufficient public awareness of the issue (5) the general world problem with stagnant income growth common to all industrial economies whose roots I do not yet understand.
Anyway, you’d think a complex public social issue like this would be ideal for the sociology types among the bloggers in Taiwan.
Michael