Save and be damned

Re: “Financial illiteracy a big problem”, (Opinion, Feb 18).

The major obstacle to people saving for their futures in not financial literacy, it is wages! Both the amount and the form.

Of course, if someone saves 1,000 baht a month, they will eventually have a fine nest egg. But that expectation is a fantasy for most Thai people, given the wage scale here and the illusion that investments are going to give returns. Factor in the reality that most jobs are poised to be replaced by automation and the internet of things, and the fantasy easily transforms into a nightmare.

An entire new economic paradigm is required, beyond the standard myth of an economy based on wages from the industrial era. We are now in the digital age and the parameters are entirely different. We have gone made a great leap from the telegraph to the smart phone in a short span of time. Today, smart phones are being manufactured and marketed via automated processes and software without the need for human involvement.

In the same short span, humanity has also destroyed the value of money, on which financial security was based. All currency for international trade used to be backed by the gold and silver standards. Nowadays, all money is “fiat currency”, meaning it has no more intrinsic value than does a flatulent unicorn.

One crash in the financial market, for example, easily destroysa lifetime’s savings. When this happens, people have to come out of retirement so they don’t starve.

It is time to come up with a more creative plan for sustainable finances than demanding savings from a source that is both dwindling and unsound!

DARIUS HOBER