Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen has called for universal cash handouts to be established as a legal system rather than decided by the president alone, but large numbers of netizens have criticised her for talking rather than delivering.

• Lai Ching-te announced that NT$10,000 will be handed out to every citizen next year, saying the aim is to let everyone share in the economic gains brought by AI.
• Lu Shiow-yen said that surplus government tax revenue comes from the people in the first place, and that the amount to be handed out should be set by a formula and by law, not treated as the president's private funds.
• Some Kuomintang lawmakers have called for NT$20,000, and Premier Cho Jung-tai said flatly that this cannot be done.
• Netizens flooded her Facebook and Threads pages, asking where the NT$100 billion from Taichung's land sales had gone, and saying that the metro planning had been dragged out for eight years and that the extra money spent would long since have been enough to give every resident NT$10,000.

Outlook: The dispute over the size of the handout and over putting it into law will continue to burn, and whether the Executive Yuan puts forward a draft bill is the next thing to watch.