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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

But social values seem to be key. Societies which have experienced the benefits
of great equality—as in Japan, where hierarchies were levelled after the Second
World War, or societies which have had periods of socialism—are more likely to

support policies of redistribution. Luebker (2015: 236) concludes that “inequality
is not an unavoidable outcome of market forces but—to some degree—a matter
of political choice and institutional design.”

Public goods and budget constraints

Thailand lacks adequate public goods such as good schools, roads,
hospitals, railway trains that stays on the rails, police that do not ask for bribes,
publicly minded public prosecutors, and judges that uphold justice. As always,
10
anything in short supply is hoarded by those with power and influence.
Public goods are the same.

Public goods and services help people to improve their capabilities to
prosper within the market economy and at the same time to make the economy
grow. Education is the prime example. If a child from a remote Thai province had
the same chance to enter tertiary education as a Bangkok child, then his or her
opportunities in life would vastly improve—and her contribution to the economy.
As Kobsak (2013) argues, providing good-quality education, and removing
economic barriers to access, is the single most important policy the Thai state
can pursue to reduce inequality in the long run. Over the past decade, Brazil
significantly reduced inequality by increasing the provision of education and
providing subsidies for children of the poor (Wetzel, 2013). But education is not
the only kind of public goods and services that is important in this way. Other
public goods work in the same way including good health, social protection
against risk, good roads, access to justice, and political and social rights of various

kinds.
The principal immediate reason why Thailand lacks public goods and
services is the low level of the government budget. Corruption in its use is a

10 For example in 2014, the ratio of doctors to patients was 1:1,000 in Bangkok, but for some
provinces in the Northeast it was 1:10,000 (UNDP, 2014). For high education, 60 percent of children
from the top 25 percent in terms of income could enroll in tertiary education (BA level), but for
those from the poorest 25 percent only 10 percent could do so. The gap was six times (World
Bank, 2009: 37).

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