Commerce association chairman: Live in Taichung, take high speed rail to Taipei for work (permalink: https://facebook/sunflowermovement/posts/337887243003104) In yet another public remark showing how out of touch rich business owners are with the situation of ordinary workers, Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (中華民國工商協進會) chairman Kenneth Lo (駱錦明) said today (5) that it is impossible for young university graduates in any country to buy a home of their own, and with modern-day advances in transport, first-time home owners can buy houses in the suburbs and commute to work, such as buying a house in Taichung and taking a one-hour high speed train ride to Taipei, if you leave home at 8 youll be in the office by 9. This is very common! (see ppt.cc/g6HW; in Chinese) The obvious flaws in this statement notwithstanding—for one thing, Lo of course fails to take into account the travel time between the high speed rail stations, the home and the office—such a suggestion is clearly unsustainable for basic financial reasons. A governmental project launched in 2009 originally called for the government to subsidize NT$22000 (roughly US$680 at the exchange rate at the time) per month for every university graduate hired by Taiwanese corporations, with the corporations themselves supplying the remainder of the salary; however, virtually no corporations added anything on top of the governmental subsidy, and as a result the monthly salary for a fresh university graduate has been driven down to 22k. With this in mind, we may consider Los comments above: Assume a 4-week (ie. 28 days) month with two-day weekends (which is required by law but widely flaunted in practice), so that an office employee who lives in Taichung but works in Taipei would need to commute to work 20 days per month. The price for a non-reserved ticket (ie. no guarantee for a seat) on the high speed rail is NT$740; therefore, the cost for 20 round trips per month from Taichung to Taipei would be NT$740×20×2=NT$29600, which far exceeds the NT$22000 monthly salary so common these days. QED.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 16:09:20 +0000
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