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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Carvajal: Vicious cycle
By Orlando P. Carvajal
Former President Fidel Ramos recently belittled President Arroyo’s claim of economic growth. If indeed, he said, there was growth, in all probability it all went only to the rich. I cannot agree with him more when he reasoned that in the present order of things the rich just get richer and the poor, poorer. Poverty is a vicious cycle.
Let’s take the reformed value-added tax (RVAT). It adds a substantially huge sum to the government’s coffers. But it is all going to be used to pay for the debts of corrupt government departments and corporations. None of the RVAT will go to pay for the debt poor people have incurred to put food on the table, buy medicine or pay for school tuition. In fact, because of RVAT, the poor will have to incur more debt in order to survive.
Let’s talk next of job creation that Sen. Mar Roxas recently claimed is the best way to solve the poverty of many Filipinos. Let us assume the jobs finally are created. The question is where would the poor jobless people be?
Precisely because they are poor, most of the jobless would be too uneducated, too unskilled or too unhealthy to take the jobs. The lucky ones who get hired are paid miserably low wages.
While we work to promote investments that create jobs we must prioritize education and health. Education and health will enable the poor to take on the jobs that will be made available when investors come. Unfortunately this is not the case. We lack classrooms and qualified teachers and our health system is so inadequate it is probably killing more people than it is keeping alive.
Side by side with job creation, the economic system should be reformed to curb the greed of those who are benefiting from it. There is too much of a gap between the salaries of the rank and file and management, between management and shareholders. Under the system, when corporations get a windfall, a disproportionately small trickle goes to the rank and file. The poor do not just need jobs. They need better-paying jobs.
We criticize Americans for screwing us. But at least Americans do not screw their own people the way we do. Americans love their workers and pay them well. In the Philippines, the farmers cannot afford to buy the rice and vegetables they toil to produce. In our cities most ordinary workers cannot afford to buy the appliances they make.
Our economic system has created riches for a few and poverty for the masses. This has determined just about everything in Philippine life including politics and, would you believe, the stampede. It is responsible for so much inequality in a supposedly Christian society. It needs an overhaul badly, hopefully before another more catastrophic stampede of the poor and obscure renders everything irretrievably moot and academic.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 15, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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