Annotation 1 (Revised)

From the article “Enhancing the Social Welfares is the Government’s Duty” by the chairman of the Taiwan New Century Foundation, he points out that the term gross national happiness is the future indicator for determining a country’s social-economic development. “According to Wikipedia the definition of the gross national happiness (GNH) was designed in an attempt to define an indicator and concept that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than only the economic indicator of gross domestic product (GDP).” It includes a wide category such as education and social welfares. Even though the things listed above are no doubt important, the methods which to achieve it are still based on money. Just think if you do not have enough money to feed yourself how could you come up with spare money to develop and maintain things.      

The challenge for the Taiwanese government now is that the generally public does not trust them. There are always disagreements to the government’s decisions. The public thinks that the government is only doing things to benefit rich people while the other suffers. There are even articles written saying that the Taiwanese government should take some Western countries for model. Perhaps it is true that these countries had both well-developed economy and social welfares. The reality, however, is that each country has its own history and culture therefore will not be the same. These countries had long stable economy while the Taiwan Economic Miracle only popped out in the recent thirty years. Yet, when we are making a decision we could not take everything into consideration, or there will be no choice made at all. Referring to the characteristic of public opinion, it contains the risks of inconsistency, complexity and variability. For ordinary citizens does not take the whole nation into concern, they are simply replying what changes had been done to them.

The decision maker, therefore, becomes important. Take the Taiwan’s Ten Major Construction Projects for example. Although the public opinions were against it at first but soon found favor from it. There is question why the general public behaved this way, because Taiwan was experiencing significant effects from both the 1973 oil crisis and economy crisis at that stage. Many people strongly believed that the government should focus on people first than to develop economy. There were even radical words on newspapers saying that the constructions are built for the riches only for the poor people will never afford to drive a car on the highway.

Apparently, the project brought up the economy as it was expected and even better. It took the whole nation into prosperity and became the well-known term of Taiwan Economic Miracle. Moreover, many people were out of poverty and even became successful in various businesses. But just think what if the government did not insist on its project and listen to what the public wants. Developing public welfares may be right but how to get the essential-money are more important. 

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness
              http://www.taiwanncf.org.tw/ttforum/56/56-17.pdf