How would you save Taiwan's economy?

Here is the place for people to put ideas about what can be done, and what is being done about the economy in crisis…

I would say:

  1. To find a way to reduce people’s debt (via reducing their mortgages, taxes on mortgages, etc…)
  2. Give tax breaks to companies who hire people

To finance it, I would propose reinstating a gas tax (now that gas it’s at a very low level), where they can get at least 4NTD a liter…

[quote=“mr_boogie”]Here is the place for people to put ideas about what can be done, and what is being done about the economy in crisis…

I would say:

  1. To find a way to reduce people’s debt (via reducing their mortgages, taxes on mortgages, etc…)
  2. Give tax breaks to companies who hire people

To finance it, I would propose reinstating a gas tax (now that gas it’s at a very low level), where they can get at least 4NTD a liter…[/quote]

If you reduce people’s debt, than the Bank loses money,and if the banks go out, than there will be no more loans and mortgages.
Option 2 seems like a nice option, but didn’t Ma or the KMT legislature proposed that already? Giving tax breaks only to companies who hire Taiwanese citizens , but of course there are restrictions and guidelines to this, (must be employed for certain amount of time, must make certain amount, etc etc) Since there are many many many businesses in Taiwan, this legislation would only affect big companies and not small mom and pop stores that you see everywhere.

Even closer intergration with PRC economy, start pegging the NTD to the RMB instead of the USD.

Invade China and plunder its treasury.

Get prisoner 2063 to return 20 million USD to the ROC government.

They do have 1.9 trillion USD in their reserve. Have prisoner 2063 lead the sucide squad in Northern Expedition II.

I suggest putting Ma Ying Jeou in power.

Create alot of government jobs, since during the bad economic times in the private sector, you can count on government for stability.
During The great Depression massive amount of jobs in the US was created by the government, from massive road construction project to bird watching (yes people were paid for watching birds by the government)

I would invest heavily into the research and science sector , especially nanotech.
I would create jobs in the defense field, taking in any contracts.
Invest in any promising technology that could be of use in the future.
Build another nuke plant…oh wait they are already doing that.
I don’t recall seeing many rivers or lakes in Taiwan, but build hydro plants where neccessary.
Expand towards the Pacific ocean by building man made islands( ie. what Japan did).
Corruption of the police needs to be stopped, create an Internal affairs department (highly paid) also reform the department of justice in Taiwan and make standards like they do here in US.

But of course all this money is going to be burrowed from China hehe.

Build a tunnel to the mainland?
Prisoner 2063 should be given a shovel to break ground on the public works project.

[quote=“ac_dropout”]Build a tunnel to the mainland?
Prisoner 2063 should be given a shovel to break ground on the public works project.[/quote]

who is prisoner 2063?
sounds like slave labor to me . . .

Make the ultimate tunnel! Taiwan to California or Hawaii!

Just another corrupt Taiwanese with Prisoner 2630. Not as entertaining as the original show, but it has it’s appeal.

Maybe Japan.

Think Japan would be the best solution… a tunnel between Japan southern islands and Taiwan (passing by the Senkaku) would mean big biz…

A tunnel from China to Taiwan would probably be the only way there could be 3000 chinese tourists a day coming over here…

Lincolnunit, if you don’t reduce people’s debt (I didn’t say to go directly to the banks), people won’t spend money. Giving them coupons to spend, wont increase their consumption, because it will simply replace other spending, which, in a strange way, will make people save and reduce debt.

There are the 12 Love Taiwan projects, they will probably stir up the economy, but one has to see how much will be lost to the Mafia’s who support local governments, and therefore, the central one.

Maybe one area the government can increase jobs is in the control area… hire more tax agents, inspectors and so. Of course, this would completely wipe off the KMT’s base, and that would be like shooting their own foot.

For the last, disbanding the Farmer’s Association, and give more power to the Council of Agriculture, although, like we saw last week, that one is also a nest of corruption…

Knock down all the crummy tenements in every big city in Taiwan and rebuild them with public-private partnerships. Somehow encourage merger or acquisition of SMEs to create more global brands with larger capital and strong research and integration capabilities.

In a thread designed for the Taipei Mayor election, there were a lot of ideas coming up on how to make Taipei better, and most of them would require government investment, but would have quite a palpable change in the quality of life. One of them was to create a reconstruction/beautification fund to make Taipei a nicer city.

We can also help by letting the government run TRTC increase their portfolio by operating city buses - they would have to buy new quality and low polluting buses (running on natural gas, by example), such as Mercedes Citaro… This would make people use more public transportation. The buses could be built in Taiwan, as there are currently companies fitting them, and therefore, increase local manufacturing. The company could do a partnership with the existing bus companies, in order to replace quickly the fleet. Introducing articulated buses to move in the busiest routes would also provide a better solution, as they offer more seats, and, therefore, more confort to people using them… Here is a picture of one in Japan:

For the airport route, or any other route classified of extremely heavy traffic, they could use the Mercedes CapaCity…

And, because many taxi drivers would be in risk, a help from the government into getting another job, or retrofitting their cabs to LPG to lower their costs, and lower pollution. The government could set up a law making a requirement to all new cabs to be LPG.

pour money into DRAM and bet that Taiwan will win against korean DRAM. It’s an all or nothing bet. If we win, we will get their market share and probably destroy their LCD industry too. We will then be able to get samsung shares for cheap and then its a pretty sweet monopoly for Taiwan from then on. :slight_smile:

but we might lose our shirts too

Oh yeah, remember that last time a government poured money into a DRAM manufacturer, that manufacturer got a import duty in Europe, US and Japan of about 30%, and made the life miserable for anyone importing memory into EU, at least…

The DRAM market is oversized, and only a miracle will save the companies like they are. Problem of Taiwan is that their technology is either Korean or Japanese, so in a moment where sell price is below production cost, it is hard to lower the price further, if you don’t own the technology. My views is that either PROMOS, Powerchip and Winbond all merge, or they will fall to doom.

Same to the LCD manufacturers…

I’ve been predicting those manufacturers had something wrong for years. If you check their news releases every year they were being bankrolled by massive loans from local banks. The amount of money being put into capital investment for new facilities was absolutely mindblowing, yet they seem to spend half the time in a non-profitable situation. To be honest I don’t see how their business operates at all.

Mr.Boogie, Taipei used to have bendy buses but I haven’t seen them for a few years now, probably had diffculty getting around corners or dealing with scooters or something. There are smaller buses from Volvo and Mercedes that are beginning to make an appearance. My view is that the only way to upgrade Taiwan properly in the short to medium term is to do it by knocking down a lot of the old stuff and rebuilding it all to modern standards, build medium rise and use the extra space for parks, side walks and public amenities. This might not cost a lot of money as the current residents could make a profit in alliance with the developers and at the same time live in a better neighbourhood, what it requires is government oversight and incentives and also a stronger government to push these type of orders through against the inevitable opposition. The people gain, the land owner gains, the construction industry gains, the environment gains, tourism gains and the government can even make some money back from property sales tax.
Of course this plan makes way too much sense…for any government in this land.

it was already put in that thread headhoncho… Ma had a good position to do it in Taipei, but somewhat he blew it up doing whatever he did for that city…

I’ll ask ‘Mr Ma-joke it’s never his fault’ to give back to the citizens NT$1.3 billion used for the Maokong gondola

[quote=“mr_boogie”]In a thread designed for the Taipei Mayor election, there were a lot of ideas coming up on how to make Taipei better, and most of them would require government investment, but would have quite a palpable change in the quality of life. One of them was to create a reconstruction/beautification fund to make Taipei a nicer city.

We can also help by letting the government run TRTC increase their portfolio by operating city buses - they would have to buy new quality and low polluting buses (running on natural gas, by example), such as Mercedes Citaro… This would make people use more public transportation. The buses could be built in Taiwan, as there are currently companies fitting them, and therefore, increase local manufacturing. The company could do a partnership with the existing bus companies, in order to replace quickly the fleet. Introducing articulated buses to move in the busiest routes would also provide a better solution, as they offer more seats, and, therefore, more confort to people using them… Here is a picture of one in Japan:

For the airport route, or any other route classified of extremely heavy traffic, they could use the Mercedes CapaCity…

And, because many taxi drivers would be in risk, a help from the government into getting another job, or retrofitting their cabs to LPG to lower their costs, and lower pollution. The government could set up a law making a requirement to all new cabs to be LPG.[/quote]

Good Lord, no way! We used to have those back home -made in Brazil- they are a nightmare! And in these streets… the horror.

Aside from that, I fully support LPG conversion. The Government has started with the taxis, hope that they will encourage buses, too.

The ones that are made in Europe are quite good, even in streets that have not tarmac, or where the tarmac is suitable only for 4WD vehicles.

There are a lot of different sizes for these buses, and the articulated ones could be used in streets like Ren Ai and so, where they could turn in big roundabouts.

[img]http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/9508/stcp1108137ne1.jpg/img]
This is an articulated bus from my hometown

Porto is an old city, and as with many old cities, it’s central streets are pretty thin, and these buses do go into them.