Why I like Taiwan – Part the Second
6. They’re good with money here.
Really they are. Taiwan is one of the few nations on the planet with CASH reserves. It doesn’t have a national debt as far as I know and they’ve kept evil forces like the World Bank at arm’s length. And there’s no dole or relief – so everyone produces something.
The average person wants to be rich. Well, of course everyone wants to be rich, but these guys WANT TO BE RICH like most people want to breathe. It’s a part of the cultural heritage to be rich.
The theory would be something like the current motto of the People’s Republic of China – ‘To be rich is glorious!” (Weird motto for a Communist country but hey they were Chinese before they were communist). Being rich would solve all the woes attendant upon living, so the idea goes, and to a degree it sure solves a lot.
The average man and woman here accumulate money almost magically. Take my daughter for example. She’s 17, she makes monthly about one eighth of what I make, but she has $2,000 bucks under her mattress. I don’t have $2,000 under mine, how did she do it? I just finished talking my other daughter out of buying a camera for $1200. Why did she want to buy the camera? We’ll get to that. But she has the cash. CASH. And she makes one twelfth of what I make every week.
Being rich for my colleagues here is a sort of genetic thing, like a fixation the cells have, and as with all fixations there are some weirdnesses too.
Like my wife goes to the Body Shop to buy $85 worth of soap and shampoo and stuff, but comes home having spent $380. Why did she overspend?
She didn’t – she saved $38 bucks. Wait that doesn’t make sense. No, it really does because the Body Shop had an offer where they will give 10% off if your purchase total exceeds $350. So she saved $38. I know, I know – please don’t get me started. OK, I’m started.
This is the same wife who will berate me for withdrawing money – money she asked me to withdraw – from the ATM ‘because there is service charge every time you use!
Why did my daughter want to buy a $1200 camera when to my knowledge she has never taken a photo in her life? Because she plans to go to Europe in five years (why Europe? Don’t ask.) And she’ll need the camera to take lots of photos of statues, and coliseums and Europeans.
But, I explained, in five years the camera will probably be obsolete, or at least there will be even niftier cameras that massage your face and remove your blackheads while you’re focusing or something cool like that. And what’s the camera going be doing for those five years except collecting dust and getting older?
I mean be prepared by all means but five years in advance?? That appeal to logic didn’t really make any headway so I dug around for the real reason – and found it.
If she buys the camera today, the shop will give her absolutely free not only a shoulder bag with the shop’s logo all over it, but also a small purse thing that looks like a rabbit and has a memory stick inside with a bunch of the most popular pop songs in MP4 format that you absolutely cannot download from the net without paying for them. Total value about $20. It’s a bargain!
And yet with all this goofiness, these two guys have saved up $3,200 between them. Tell me that isn’t stellar! And that’s just another reason why I like living here.
More later…
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