Concerned that efforts to stimulate the economy will only increase the national debt, the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform (AFTR) created a “human national debt clock” on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office yesterday.
Wearing purple T-shirts with numbers written on their backs, AFTR members lined up at the intersection of Ketagalan Boulevard and Gongyuan Road, together spelling out “13,800,000,000,000” — or NT$13.8 trillion (US$390 billion).
“This number represents Taiwan’s actual national debt — on average, each one of the country’s 23 million citizens has to shoulder about NT$600,000 of it,” spokesman Chien Hsi-chieh told reporters.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
While figures released by the Ministry of Finance earlier this month showed the current national debt to be NT$4.3 billion, AFTR member Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said that the number was inaccurate as many “hidden debts” were not accounted for in the official figure.
“The government should deal with our national debt honestly. They need to stop tax reforms that benefit large corporations and refrain from making policies that will only make the situation worse,” Chien said. “We don’t want our children and grandchildren to be born into debt.”
Alliance members said they were concerned that the government’s policy direction would make the situation worse.
Since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office, the government has increased the national debt with several projects, including plans to expand domestic consumption and the i-Taiwan construction projects. The recent consumer vouchers policy — which will require another NT$80 billion in public debt — is only the latest addition, Son said.
“With the NT$400 billion ‘economic stimulation’ program on the way, the Ma government has already added more than NT$726 billion to our national debt,” he said.
The AFTR urged the government to hang a real national debt clock outside the Presidential Office, “so that every person can see how seriously we’re in debt,” a press statement said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching