Conflict, Legitimacy and Government Reform: Equitable Allocation of ...

Panel Discussion
Hyun Hwa Son’s study also suggested that Thai government should
revamp public expenditure to increase equality. For instance, he proposed
that existing subsidies of electricity, water and transportation should be
abolished. Instead, the government should subsidize parents’ school
expenses, i.e. tuition, books and other education-related expenses in
public schools at primary and secondary levels. He also urged that health
care and education spending be revamped with an aim to improve
equality. In this regard, the free 12-year education policy of the present
government is considered to be on the right track, even though it is still
insufficient.
Based on experiences of some countries, there is still another way to
spend tax revenue to help improve quality of life and mitigate inequality,
that is, having a universal social security system which is contributed by
both government and people. Currently, we use this system for workers
but its coverage is only 25.7% of the total number of workers or 13.9%
of the population. (Kobsak and Anan, 2007).
We may discuss about weaknesses of public administration in other
dimensions which adversely impacts resource allocation of the country,
such as issues concerning corruption and justice system and so forth.
However, the information shown above obviously tells us that we must
have a sweeping reform, starting from revamping taxation system to
ensure a fairer allocation of tax burden and revamping public expenditure
to enhance equality.
Now I would like to summarize the approaches that the government
should pursue as follows:
First, there should be more public programs and services (public
goods) that every people can gain equal benefits and public goods should
be products and services that will contribute to mitigation of inequality
in respect to health and education in particular. To achieve this, the
government must collect more tax revenue. Therefore, a target of over 17
per cent of GDP should be set to generate more tax revenue in the
future. That means increasing the number of people who must pay
income tax, revamping interest rate tax which is still slow, and reforming
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