Public Finance and Social Welfare: Problem and Argument Issues toward the Public Finance Reformation for Sustainable Social Welfare System in Thailand.

Abstract

The economics, society and politics of Thailand have been changing from time to time. The examples of causal factors were the Constitution, which stipulated that the state must provide social welfare for citizen, development policy of the country shifted to “human resources” orientation, aging society and populist policies of political parties.  These changes were the important factors which caused increasing in public expenditures while the government has limited budgets. Therefore, social welfare development for Thai people was also limited. Moreover Thailand is facing with many challenges in social welfare system such as problem in “high investment in education but get low quality”, problem of different quality of  health care and problem of “aging society” Therefor government should develop social welfare system as follows (1) change public policy from “populist policy to public policy for all” in order to make a sustainable social welfare  (2) provide opportunity for people to participate in budget allocation process (3) reform public finance system and impose new taxes such as property tax  and heritage tax (4) set the goals of public expenditure for specific groups of people such as the cripple, the poor, etc. through the social welfare system.