Household disposable income last year averaged NT$1.09 million (US$35,014), rising 1 percent from 2020, while median household disposable income edged up 0.1 percent to NT$929,000, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Wednesday.
Average disposable per capita income advanced 2.1 percent to NT$377,000, while median per capita income gained 1.8 percent to NT$326,000, the agency said.
Average household income is used to help gauge the monetary well-being of a country’s citizens. Median household incomes are taken as indicators of standard of living because they include only disposable income and acknowledge that people sharing accommodation benefit from pooling at least some of their living costs.
Taipei led other special municipalities in household disposable income at NT$1.43 million, followed by Taoyuan, New Taipei City, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the agency said.
However, people spent less for two consecutive years, as most stayed home to avoid infection during COVID-19 outbreaks.
Disease control measures also affected social gatherings and recreational activities, the DGBAS said.
INCOME GAP
The income gap last year rose to 6.15 times, a 10-year high, as the rich benefited from capital gains, another DGBAS survey showed.
The income difference for 2020 stood at 6.13 times, it said.
The liquidity-driven rallies across global financial markets last year significantly inflated asset prices for the wealthy.
However, the widening gap should not be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic as the government introduced waves of relief measures and subsidy programs to support affected people and businesses, the agency said.
The income of the top 1 percent in Taiwan accounted for a relatively low percentage of overall income compared with other countries, it added.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to