Flashpoint 2:
Holes in the social safety net?
As an export-oriented country, amidst the tides of globalization Taiwan cannot hide from the head-on impact of the world being "flat." Those who are able to ride the wave see opportunities around the world. Those who are unable to adapt discover that they have trouble even keeping on their feet. "People feel less secure, and there is more pressure in daily life. In the past people would go to Starbucks to reward themselves, but now they think twice even before buying an ordinarily priced coffee at 85°C." This is how Tien Li-fang, director of the public assistance section in the Kaohsiung County Bureau of Social Affairs, expresses her feelings.
Academia Sinica distinguished research fellow C. Y. Cyrus Chu points out that according to a survey of household income and expenditures conducted by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, the gap between the wealthiest 20% of the population and the poorest 20% reached a peak in 2001, and has since moderated. But according to numbers from the Financial Data Center of the Ministry of Finance, dividing all taxpayers into 20 cohorts, the income of the top 5% is now 51 times that of the lowest 5%, compared to only 32 times in 1998. There is definitely a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor.
Nonetheless, the worsening of income distribution and the squeezing out of existence of the middle class is by no means a phenomenon unique to Taiwan. The Japanese author Kenichi Ohmae wrote in his 2006 bestseller The M-Shaped Society that the shifting of income distribution so that the left and right ends of the spectrum are rising, while the middle is falling (thereby creating an M-shaped society), is a global phenomenon.
Looking at this trend, Lin Wan-i, a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University and a former minister without portfolio who launched the "Great Warmth" plan in mid-2006, states: "We don't really care that the income of the top stratum will go from NT$1.8 million per year to NT$3 million; that is not the issue. The problem is how to bring up the disposable income of the lowest group from NT$290,000 a year to NT$600,000 a year, so that they have enough to live on." Even excluding the 1% of the lowest-income population that receives government assistance, there are by conservative estimates 1.38 million "new poor" and "near poor." These are precisely the people that the government has been trying so hard to look after more thoroughly.
"The traditional poor were mostly poor as a result of factors like old age, disability, illness, or children. But under the impact of globalization, in recent years there have appeared a large number of long-term unemployed people resulting from disinvestments in local factories and/or lack of skills desired by the labor market, as well as people who have lost everything as a result of poor investments. In some cases these poor families spend their lives paying off debts, and there have even been a few family murder-suicides." Lin notes that the program for helping disadvantaged families dig themselves out of financial holes, part of the Great Warmth plan, is aimed precisely at these families in dire emergency situations, in the hope that something that can never be undone will not be undertaken in a moment of desperation.
Lin states that the Great Warmth stimulus program will invest NT$191.4 billion over three years, creating at least 20,000 jobs. It is targeted at four major areas: reducing wealth inequality, improving care for the elderly, coping with the reduced birth rate, and improving citizens' health.
Ironically, some of the cases found by the media for the relentless daily parade of reports of tragic lives in Taiwan are in fact beneficiaries of the Great Warmth. Yet the media focuses exclusively on making these people appear as pathetic as possible while disregarding government efforts, with the result that society plunges deeper into a collective sense of injustice and anger. Sadly this is of no use whatsoever to solving concrete problems.
Whether you like it or not, globalization is an irreversible trend. The only thing between proactive response and pessimistic avoidance is a matter of attitude. The photo shows people who work at the Neihu Technology Park hurrying out for lunch.