Editorial: The infamous 18% interest rate

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3073 Edition                                                                
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
         

January 17-23, 2011

Editorial



Editorial: The infamous 18% interest rate

Translated by Lydia Ma



An old 77 year old man is seen selling magnolias under a freeway overpass 
near Kaohsiung. On a placard in front of him are scribbled the words “I 
don’t have 18%, so I sell magnolias to make a living.” 



Not only is this old fellow venting his anger at the controversial 18% 
preferential interest rate retired civil servants receive on their 
pensions, he’s also clever in manipulating controversy to his advantage.

From a Christian perspective, life is often full of unreasonable and unfair 
things and the call of every Christian throughout history has been to 
promote justice as part of advancing God’s kingdom on earth. 



The preferential 18% interest rate that retired teachers, veterans, and 
civil servants receive is a historical relic and a reflection of an era 
from which we’ve recently emerged from that included many ludicrous things 
that benefited the rich and the powerful. But it’s one thing to criticize 
an unfair phenomenon, and quite another thing to use it to attack another 
person to advance self-interests.



When the richest 5% in Taiwan’s population are 66 times richer than the 
poorest 5%, it’s no wonder that Taiwanese people at the bottom of this 
economic food-chain hate veterans, civil servants, and public school 
teachers for having a preferential interest rate. But this fury should be 
directed at an unfair system promoted by the KMT government instead of 
targeting it towards recipients of this preferential treatment.     



Besides advocating for righteousness and justice through various movements, 
churches can also learn a lot from history and from role models such as 
Nobel Peace Prize 2006 laureate Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. Both 
were awarded the prize "for their efforts to create economic and social 
development from below". 



Yunus founded a bank in 1976 that lent money to women living in the village 
of Jobra, Bangladesh, at a much lower interest rate than average lenders. 
As of 2004, millions of women in Bangladesh were able to make a living, 
raise a family, and succeed in life because of  such low-interest loans.



In contrast, the KMT that fled China in defeat and ruled over Taiwan 
afterwards and throughout the past 50 years except for a brief 8-year lapse 
brought with it corruption and immorality and influenced and stained 
Taiwanese culture. 



As the Church, we have a responsibility to make these customs a relic of 
the past so that, as Yunus once said, future generations will only see 
poverty inside museums.



Jesus himself showed us how God feels about corruption when he overturned 
the tables of moneychangers in the courtyard of God’s temple in Jerusalem 
and stopped a corrupt system that bullied the masses. His feeding of 
thousands shortly after this incident also shows us what and who he 
prioritized.

  

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