Those who fail to foresee the future will have problems in the present. We should not make the mistake of thinking that the national debt will only bring grief to future generations. It is going to make the present generation suffer first.
Under the third-rate democracy we have in Taiwan, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government will of course keep papering over the cracks, putting the problem off until after he has been elected to a second term.
The worrying thing is this: while Greece has the EU and the IMF to back it up, whom will Taiwan look to when it reaches the verge of bankruptcy? Will we end up begging for money from China? It doesn’t matter which side of the political divide you stand on, that is a nightmare prospect for everyone in Taiwan.
Huang Juei-min is a law professor at Providence University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
RSS