The most content person in Thailand is the rural rice farmer. He is the head of a family that is hard working, independent, and almost self-sufficient. He grows his own rice, tends his chickens, picks fruit from his trees, and barters his labor. His need for money is not great. He does have to buy fertilizer, seed, and a small amount of fuel. He does not have nor require electricity at his house and many times does not have running water indoors. But he is happy with his life until someone tells him that he needs a television set.

The farmers life will never be the same after he buys a television set. First he will have to get electricity to his house and the monthly bill that accompanies it. Then he will have to borrow the money to buy the television which he will have to pay back at an unusually high interest rate. And if the farmer thought before he had a hard time keeping his children from leaving the farm and going to the city for an "easier" life and higher paying jobs, he now has to compete with the television sending this message.

After the television is bought he then buys a new farm machine he saw advertised with those easy credit terms. For his wife he will buy a rice cooker he saw advertised on another channel with no payments for 90 days. His son will soon want some designer footwear and his daughter will want that cellular phone she saw on television.

Now that the farmer is finacially ruined, he sells the farmland that has been with his family for at least three generations and moves to Bangkok. One day while looking out his small shanty, he will recall the days when he owned a farm, the air was clean, and he will say "it all started with that first television set".

The rural farmer in Issan makes around 10,000 baht per year.