Saturday, August 09, 2008 Sula: Grin-and-bear it economics By Jun Sula Commentary
ARE Pinoys much better off today than at any other time in their lives?
It's easy to make a fast judgment. A number of indicators are really that bad and all bets are off. A denatured forecast that things will get better before they get worse maybe too much optimism. Yikes!!!
For a start, food prices are up and poised to hit a few notches higher in the days ahead. Supermarket owners have sounded off spikes as the ber months approach. Rice price and supply continue to be on the survival menu among the poor. Not even NFA has the final say on these. Or does it?
Fuel prices, now on a roller coaster, are hitting the moneyed most, but they don't spare the poor also as these affect the cost of goods and services, too. A faint streak of hope is on the horizon as the Americans geared up for the presidential election in November. My reading is that the most powerful country now ruled by the Republicans might try to bring the price down some more. Americans reeling from the record-high gas prices even as their economy are struggling to recover from the mortgage meltdown. Unless things looked up before voters write down their choice for the new White House tenant, Republicans might wake up with the Democrats on the saddle.
It's a wild theory, but we all need some kind of a break or luck to feel better these days.
When prices go up, cost transfer is an option and, while a democratic practice, is really a one-way street. Meaning, a restaurateur can always fast the added cost to its diners who can only fast it down, not up, the line. Unfortunately, everybody knows who's at the end of the line. Yes, the poor.
Fortunately, high prices are no respecter of persons, which is just about the only common consolation people, from all walks of life, really can have in these difficult times. That is what the recent polls revealed: that many people are spending less for food. Guess who spends even more.
In economics, there's a law that says that when people incomes rise, the percentage spent on food goes down. I don't know what law applies to our case, given the same trend but coming from a different direction. Maybe we can simply call it the law of reverse fortune.
The nitty gritty for many could be something like, if a family had been spending P5 for a sachet of cheap noodles ( both a redundancy and an insult), it will have to cut that in half or nothing at all. On this alone, the scenario can really be depressing.
The funny thing is, a survey before this survey showed that Filipinos are also among the happiest in the world. Whoever conducted that survey must have his methodology or stats, which are sometimes referred to as the sister of lies, examined. Better yet, have their respondents heads examined.
Because in these dire times, it's a monstrous challenge to keep one's head while a lot of things seem to go haywire. You apply the grin-and-bear approach to life, which is what very religious people like Filipinos have been doing all this time, and expect that things will be back to normal.
Maybe they will, Maybe they won't. But it won't hurt to try to see the brighter side, even if the dark clouds are far from breaking up.
So if you think you're not much better off today, maybe a better deal is on its way, somehow.
