Just the from the ugly buildings? Taiwan’s per capita discretionary income( money after taxes and price of living) is I believe 7-8th highest on earth.
Could not find good articale on discretionary income but found disposable (income after taxes)
who thinks Taiwan is poor?
Maybe it’s just my firends in US, some expatiate fourms also
Most people don’t even know where Taiwan is, or that it exists in the first place. The average American thinks anywhere outside of the US is poor because the government tells them that it is, same as in China. I don’t think anyone who has actually been here imagines Taiwan is “poor”, except perhaps intellectually … but again, you could say that about 99% of the planet.
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I was honestly surprised that my firends knew were Taiwan was. These are typical 17 year olds who work all week to spend it all on weed in one day.
Can you blame them? If you show anyone a “real” picture of Taiwan what you usually see are rundown buildings with sidewalks covered by mountains of scooters parked left, right and centre. The cities look like they’re building held together by spit and glue.
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Lol
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yeah thats my question too.
Taiwan is most certainly not poor, yet even if it was, so farging what? It’s not as if there aren’t poor places in many so called advanced cuntries.
North America and Blighty, for two.
Not that there is anything wrong with. I have had the good fortune to mingle with many a varied class crowd in my decadent & depraved existence, and I can not express strongly enough the sentiment that it takes all kinds. Every stratum has good and bad, but if push came to shove, I’d rather be with poor. Call it realpolitricks, but I’d rather be with the street wise than the circle jerk. Don’t even get me started on the middle classes…
Aside from the images from even the richest inner city areas of Taiwan, which often look like the slums commonly found in the inner-cities of more developed countries, I’d imagine that government behaviour, including corruption akin to that found in the developing world, strange land use practices and the behaviour or Taiwanese citizens (from piling old scooters and garbage outside their houses to the archaic day to day religious or spiritual practices that seem to govern a large percentage of the populace) enhance the perception that Taiwan is a poor country.
Taiwan’s location, next to China and just above the Philippines, and the fact that it sounds like ‘Thailand’ (so it therefore, subconsciously perhaps, must be the same as Thailand) probably does little to further its image as a country which is not poor, but in fact quite well off. Ironically, Taiwan was the butt of jokes as a developing nation, making plastic toy cars and mop buckets, but this is what propelled it to success and fortune. Unfortunately, the image has been difficult to shake.
Taiwan’s exports are not as high profile or as well known as other Asian countries’ exports. For example, other Asian countries manufacture very well known brands such as Hyundai, (Korea) LG (Korea), Sony (Japan) and Nissan (Japan) and these products can be found both in the home and on the road in western countries, and have had time to become established as brand and household names. Even terrorists roam around aimlessly firing AK47’s (USSR) on Toyota pickups (Japan) and are often reported live in HD on your Samsung (Korea) by the news channel RT (Russia).
And let’s face it. Many people back home, and some I have met in Taiwan, think that Acer (Taiwan) and HTC (Taiwan) are from Japan (Japan).
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Foxconn is Taiwanese but even Taiwanese don’t clamour when it gets some bad press in China. I know Europeans who think Acer is Italian.
Even people with a limited knowledge of the world know that Taiwan has been a key contributor to the world economy over the last 30 years.
When I was young ‘Made in Taiwan’ was not only plastered on everything, it was a catch phrase, and as far as nations go it isn’t the worst rep you can have, and it certainly isn’t one that exudes poorness. As for the piles of garbage and scooters, that sure as fuck isn’t my neighborhood, nor is it anything I come across in my day to day dealings. There are shitty areas in EVERY country, and Taiwan is no exception, but they aren’t as bad as in other countries. The people here are doing a very good job making things better and in the next decade I think this island is going to blossom into something special, similar to how Korea matured in the '00s.
In my opinion Taiwan looks poorer than it is. The area I lived in for a couple of years, for example, actually had some very high income people, and most of the others were at least middle class, but it looked like the kind of crime-ridden housing project you would be risking your life to walk in in the USA.
It also developed very quickly. In Western countries, things just don’t change that quickly. So if a place was poor 30 years ago, the perception is that it will still be poor now, in many cases.
And as mentioned, most people have only a hazy idea of where Taiwan is or what it is like, which is perfectly normal. Taiwanese students and friends often had very odd ideas about other countries too - my Chinese teacher thought that people in Ghana walked around naked, for example. My coteacher told our (adult) students that I lived in an igloo in Canada, and they believed him.
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Not true that places in the West don’t develop quickly, some of them have just recently including where I am from, we just had better rule of law and environmental wherewithal to curb some, though not all, of the excesses. Besides it’s a fallacy to say Taiwan wasn’t developed until recently, it was already developed in parts in the 1930s and 1949s as were many parts of Asia. Many places were badly managed but in the case of Taiwan a massive population explosion was at fault along with lack of long term or holistic thinking.
It’s all excuses at this stage though, there is plenty of money available if they really wanted to clean the place up, now it’s more of a cultural issue.
First of all, Taiwan plays it up internationally to get concessions, so, in terms of reputation, it doe snot work well.
As to image, every time my family in the ol’ country, a developing nation with a third of Taiwan’s GDP, sees pictures from the environment I live in, they snicker and demand me to go back. Why? Because it looks much worse than the average middle class neighborhood back there. And we are talking Central America, for Pete’s sake! I really cannot understand how people here live with so much money under the mattress but invest so little in quality of life. So what’s the money for?! And don’t tell me retirement as they keel over rather quickly and even then they do not seem to enjoy it but rather throw it away in crazier and crazier schemes to make more money. That is why the elderly are such easy prey here. They do not seem to know the meaning of the word “enough”.
This is such a safe and overall nice place to live, and young people like to spend their salaries worth in luxury items but overall, it does not feel like a “rich” country. And with the salaries people make, it is not. GDP or PPP can be deceiving, me thinks.
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Trust me, the old folks riding on rundown scooters are the ones with beaucoup acres of land or fat bank accounts.
I was honestly surprised that my firends knew were Taiwan was. These are typical 17 year olds who work all week to spend it all on weed in one day.[/quote]
You say that because you’ve yet to discover the many wonders of such herbal therapy. 
'twas always thus, even back in the old country. Only when you get rich do you gain the privilege of looking like a hobo. And on a similar note:
One of the things I like about Taiwan is that the rich are not especially ostentatious. Once they’ve bought their way-too-big car, they’re pretty much happy. I know a couple of people who (by any standards) would be considered mega-rich, but they still live in a grotty flat the same size as mine. OK, they own another 20, but they don’t feel compelled to live in a gated mansion. That sort of society you get in highly-unequal poor countries, where the have-nots live among the trash and the upper classes are walled off behind barbed wire and armed guards … I find that far more offensive than Taiwan’s uniform mediocrity.
And I think the reason old people feel compelled to accumulate more and more cash is that they have feckless, clueless offspring who expect mummy and daddy to buy them a house when they get married.
It’s a culture largely based around money so yes there are many rich people here and no many don’t know anything else so will keep at the money making until they die.
There are some nice houses in some places in the countryside these days though.
Who is this “everyone?”
It would take a certain type of people who are not very educated nor well-read/well-traveled, young, naive, provincial, ignorant (don’t mean that in a bad way, but lack of knowledgeable) to make that stereotype, imo. The rest of the world has grown up.
It’s like when some Taiwanese think all white Americans are rich and blond. I laugh and laugh inside. On the outside, I smile politely.