And export orders down again!
Good thing Ma Ying-jeou is in charge and that Golden Decade is just four years late so far! Oh, and prices are going up.
The KMT really knows how to run an economy!
[quote=“Feiren”]And export orders down again!
Good thing Ma Ying-jeou is in charge and that Golden Decade is just four years late so far! Oh, and prices are going up.
The KMT really knows how to run an economy!
appledaily.com.tw/appledaily … 3/34247050[/quote]
Good job providing no context at all :roflmao: (Ahh, you read the apply daily, of course.) The average salary fell compared to last year, which was a record high. The average monthly salary now is NT 56,667, which is the second highest average in the history of Taiwan. So your complaints against the current administration are simply wrong in terms of household income: they have taken it to heights never reached before! After the “min jin dang” was finished running Taiwan, the government was handing out “consumer tickets”. As for exports, they will go up when manufacturing demand picks up later this year. That’s a fact. Nothing to worry about - export rates fluctuate. And, because of ECFA, direct flights to China and Chinese tourism here, The Taiwanese people have made a lot of money. None of this would have happened if Ma wasn’t president. I think Ma is doing a lot of things wrong, but I am not going to act like a reactionist idiot when things slide a few percentage points. (Taiwan’s unemployment rate is just over 4%, too, which is a lot better than a lot of countries these days.)
Honestly, I think gas / electricity prices should be a lot higher. People might get off their scooter seat and walk! All those lights could be turned off, too. These are the kinds of things responsible human beings should be doing considering the direction we’re headed in.
Averages mean nothing, the median is king in a country with as much income inequality as Taiwan.
Taiwan is almost always at full employment as there is no social welfare in Taiwan. There are always jobs available in Taiwan, it’s just many people do not want to do them because of low pay or hard working conditions. On the street I live on almost every restaurant is hiring, obviously the low pay and shifttwork along with two days off a month for full time employees is not attractive to potential hirees and they have a high staff turnover.
That average salary of 57k/mth is ridiculous.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Averages mean nothing, the median is king in a country with as much income inequality as Taiwan.
That average salary of 57k/mth is ridiculous.[/quote]
Well, that’s what’s being measured…
Well it’s a bullshit statistic that should be expunged from almost everywhere it appears. It tells us…nothing.
I don’t have a problem with that. What’s the mean salary now? What was it 5 years ago?
Taiwans electronic exports aren’t rosy this year. Flat panels, memory chips and laptops are all performing poorly and many have lost money, in many cases huge amounts of money. We have not heard about this because govt supporter banks have organized consortia to rollover the loans to keepmtgese zombie companies afloat.
I don’t blame the KMT neccessarily for all of this but let’s just say the govt and private industry need to change before they are outspent by the Koreans and Chinese and innovated out by the Americans and the rest.
archylgp: The mean is a poor measure of anything, for the reasons HH2 has mentioned/alluded to. It’s too affected by outliers. In theory, the mean could actually have increased, but the median could have decreased, due to someone who was very rich making a lot more money. For example, consider the following two examples:
3, 5, 7 (mean = 5)
2, 4, 12 (mean = 6)
You need to look at the overall distribution. I wouldn’t even look at the median. I’d probably look at something like the inter-quartile range.
The consumer vouchers were a Ma administration policy decision. They were after the DPP left office.
OK, here are the figures. You have to add 11 to the year on the left.
89 年 41861 33953
90 年 41960 34489
91 年 41530 34746
92 年 42065 34804
93 年 42685 35101
94 年 43163 35386
95 年 43493 35728
96 年 44414 36335
97 年 44424 36423
98 年 42176 35620
99 年 44430 36271
100年 45642 36803
2 月 45939 36096
3 月 40943 36612
4 月 40762 36693
5 月 42062 36746
6 月 41711 36657
7 月 42625 36765
8 月 42266 36943
9 月 43304 37013
10 月 40644 37101
11 月 39881 36997
12 月 45641 37262
101年1-3月 55667 37160
1 月 83580 37064
2 月 42149 37054
3 月 41298 37360
The first column is the total (monthly fixed wages plus overtime and bonus. The second is the average salary/wage for the month.
The number in January this year and last is high because people get their New Year’s bonus.
We see that in March 2012, people’s were making NT$37,360 in wages plus a measly NT$3,938 in overtime/bonus for a total of 41,298.
People aren’t exactly on the gravy train.
The truth is that neither party knows what to do about Taiwan’s economic malaise. Or, even if they do, the Taiwanese aversion to any change is so great that it its not politically possible to do anything except tiny ineffectual steps that do not keep pace with the erosion of Taiwan’s competitiveness.
I was just venting because Ma is still claiming to know how to run Taiwan’s economy when in fact he is just a member of the China cargo cult.
Now consider the 11% rise in consumer prices since 2006. I suspect people are making less in real terms.
The article is a turdfest. There could be any number reasons for the average wage to drop but it is not broken down for us.
All we know it that total remuneration divided by number of workers has dropped 1% or so.
We don’t know if pay went up or down for most, we don’t know what happened with bonuses, we don’t know about overtime or other working conditions, we don’t know about temporary layoffs.
We don’t know squat.
Edit- thanks Feiren, much more illustrative of the situation. Obviously with higher costs for goods and services peoples purchasing power has decreased.
There has even been frank talk about how Taiwanese can earn more overseas backpacking than they earn here.
Young people here are screwed without the bank of mammy and daddy to back them up. That’s what concerns me most, the difficulty to make new money compared to people coasting on their old money.
Feiren: I laughed at “China cargo cult”. Are they going to start speaking pidgin too?
HH2: Well, I know that my take-home pay has actually decreased since last year. I got a slight pay increase (roughly inline with inflation), but I’ve started paying tax this year. 
There hasn’t been a revision in the pay scale since the first of August, 2005.
My take home decreased too even though I have had a couple of rate of inflation pay rises, because I get paid in foreign currency. I don’t think there are many people, anywhere, who have seen a decent pay rise recently. The problem in Taiwan’s cases is they didn’t even get any decent pay raises in the last 10-15 years!
EDIT- The Chinese minimum wage workers are getting something like 20% added on every year, that’s good for them, but a fair whack is getting eaten up by inflation too.
What can you call it, ‘the great levelling’…unless you are extraordinary, you will be levelled! 
Well, that not true for Taiwan’s wealthier citizens.
Taipei household income has increased from about NT1.3 million per household in 2000 to NT1.58 million in 2010. In contrast, farming households in Taidong made NT$600,000 while non-farming households made NT800,000.
I should say salaried workers, the 1% (or whatever it is they amount to who own most of the property and assets), they are loving the low tax, low interest, low wages regime.
Yep! It must be great to be rich in Taiwan.
HH2: I think it’s probably a phenomenon happening all over the world, this “Great Levelling”. Anyone who is above average (on a world scale) can pretty much only go downwards due to greater competition. I’m not sure that such a thing was ever going to not happen though. China (and India, and many other parts of the world) were out of the game for so long, but now they’re in the game. As soon as they got back in the game, everyone else was pretty much screwed.
Probably the only people who can avoid the “Great Levelling” are either people who really are highly qualified/in demand or people who already have a significant level of assets producing income that way. These two situations don’t really describe the average Taiwanese person though (or person from many (semi-)developed nations). I think egalitarian societies are pretty much an illusion, and we’re returning to the natural M-shaped societies that have always existed.
I think the expectation modern people have aren’t good. Everyone wants to get a “good job” but few are willing to acquire skills since they all want to be doctors or lawyers or whatever jobs that are hot at the moment. The problem is hot jobs are subject to change and by the time you graduate the jobs may not be so hot anymore.
A society can’t work if everyone is a doctor or lawyer so people should find out what they’re cut out to do and do that job well.
Well I think there are plenty of people who don’t want to work as doctors and laywers, I’m not sure what you are arguing about here?
On the one hand you complain luthiery pays crap in Taiwan and is not appreciated and you would get paid more elsewhere…on the other it’s as if you think if you just work hard you will be rewarded for your efforts.
Why do people want to be doctors and lawyers (or their parents for the kids)? Because it’s pretty much a guarantee of material success…whereas you can be a shit hot teacher or guitar maker but if society doesn’t want to recognise that as a high paying job or if the demand isn’t there…well tough luck. The only reason doctors and lawyers get paid so well is because they have professional associations that jealously guard their turf.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Well I think there are plenty of people who don’t want to work as doctors and laywers, I’m not sure what you are arguing about here?
On the one hand you complain luthiery pays crap in Taiwan and is not appreciated and you would get paid more elsewhere…on the other it’s as if you think if you just work hard you will be rewarded for your efforts.
Why do people want to be doctors and lawyers (or their parents for the kids)? Because it’s pretty much a guarantee of material success…whereas you can be a shit hot teacher or guitar maker but if society doesn’t want to recognise that as a high paying job or if the demand isn’t there…well tough luck. The only reason doctors and lawyers get paid so well is because they have professional associations that jealously guard their turf.[/quote]
Hey sometimes I complain about stuff like this because I get frustrated at the lack of customers sometimes, but I know things will pick up given enough time because the few luthiers here literally works 24 hours a day (they actually choose their clients). I am sorry for the complaints I have made in the past and I have been working on not complaining about stuff, just that it’s a bit like quitting smoking.
There are plenty of skilled work, both white collar or blue collar that does pay fairly well, maybe not as well as a doctor or lawyer but it pays enough to provide a decent lifestyle. For example welding is a skill that is always in demand everywhere, maybe not so much in Taiwan but a skilled welder doesn’t have to worry about not being able to find work. Medicine is special because you have to be licensed in order to practice medicine, but I also know just because you went through medical school doesn’t mean you are a good doctor or you’re even cut out to be a doctor, and mistakes in medicine is very very costly.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]archylgp: The mean is a poor measure of anything, for the reasons HH2 has mentioned/alluded to. It’s too affected by outliers. In theory, the mean could actually have increased, but the median could have decreased, due to someone who was very rich making a lot more money. For example, consider the following two examples:
3, 5, 7 (mean = 5)
2, 4, 12 (mean = 6)
You need to look at the overall distribution. I wouldn’t even look at the median. I’d probably look at something like the inter-quartile range.[/quote]
I know the difference (typed the wrong word.). You’re right; it comes down to distribution. If the standard deviation is acceptable,then averages should be fine, correct?
It seems the numbers in the papers a few days ago were wrong, anyways, if the numbers provided by Feiren are correct. Feiren, what method was used to get those numbers?