As the plane descended into the city, backed up cars could be seen from hundreds of feet up as street protests added to the city’s usual traffic problems. Getting to my downtown hotel meant that a visitor to what is, according to Mastercard’s Global Destination Cities Index, the world’s most visited capital city, had to first buy a ticket on an airport train, then buy another ticket on the subway, and finally walk the last mile through a sea of protestors who had blocked off Silom Road in the heart of Bangkok’s banking district.
And Thailand’s gridlocked political and physical infrastructure has cost the country dearly. When I worked at the US Embassy in Bangkok in the early 1990′s Thailand’s “Asian Tiger” economy, with its GDP growth rate of more than 7%, was the envy of its neighbors and a magnet for foreign investment.
Now, however, Shanghai’s per capita GDP has reached $12,784 – nearly matching the Thai capital’s level of $14,301 per capita, with Shanghai’s GDP growth rate (as well as in China as a whole) at 7.7% in 2013, compared to Thailand’s estimated figure of between 3.0 and 3.7%.
For Thailand, where protestors have vowed to block tomorrow’s elections, the failure to build a consensus and to agree on systems that can get the country moving again threaten to make this once-Tiger economy into an economic also-ran. Just this month, the country’s finance ministry downgraded its GDP forecast for 2014 from 4% to 3.1% after previously moving its target downward during December from 5.1% to 4%.
American Politics With Thai Characteristics
Similar to Thailand, in recent decades the US has struggled to reach agreement even on what were once nonpartisan initiatives such as transport and other infrastructure as parties struggle for control over their piece, rather than trying to grow the pie.
Let’s hope that America’s political problems don’t lead to further economic stagnation, as I wouldn’t care to come home to the US and find major intersections blocked by bands of blue and red-shirted protestors trying to figure out if the president really had the right to use executive orders to push forward his economic objectives.