Tag: economic growth

We Rip What We Sew: Hindrances to Genuine Progress in the Philippines

May 4, 2017 zaxx 3 Comments

As if being relentlessly subjected to searing heat and powerful devastating typhoons, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes on the Pacific Rim of Fire was not enough, many Filipinos like savage wolves are having a field day tearing apart their little would-have-been tropical paradise. Analogous to termites which build their house by slowly destroying their host’s fully…

Culture, Development

Filipinos should junk the 1986 People Power narrative in order to TRULY progress

August 18, 2016 benign0 77 Comments

It’s time Filipinos pause, step back, take stock, and ask: What is really going on here? If one would attempt to answer that question using the common frame of mind with which Filipinos have coocooned themselves within, the responses would be unsurprising, quite trite, and peppered with certain key words prevalent in mainstream discourse today:…

Crime, Culture, Development, Economy

3 ways a lack of ethical citizenship serves as a serious roadblock to Philippine progress

December 3, 2014December 3, 2014 benign0 13 Comments

The trouble with Filipinos is that they don’t see any meaning in their lives that is bigger than themselves. At best there is, like most warm-blooded mammals with bulges in their heads wider than their brainstems, that instinctive altruism for his own immediate family. But even that one is often brought to question on account…

Civics, Crime, Culture, Development, Environment, Lifestyle, Politics, Religion, Society

Financial Times Editor David Pilling confirms Philippine economy grew on back of Arroyo’s legacy

July 13, 2014 benign0 37 Comments

Where are we now? No one knows. We don’t know whether we are coming or going or how far we are in our journey to whatever was promised to the Filipino during President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III’s campaign. All we know for sure is that four years have passed since we elected ourselves a…

Development, Economy, Government, Media

The persistent myth of economic growth

July 4, 2014August 4, 2022 benign0 5 Comments

Development in understanding in recent years is making real limits on growth a lot more palpable since it is becoming quite evident that our approach to measuring economic value and the costs of acquiring said “value” (i.e. our monetary system) is woefully incomplete. Yet economic growth remains the be-all-end-all that pervades every aspect of human…

Development, Economy, Environment, Lifestyle, Money Talks

Philippine tourism touted as key to ‘inclusive’ growth while decay of key infrastructure continues

May 20, 2014 benign0 13 Comments

Climate change continues to loom as one of the biggest risks to the Philippines’ long-term future. Speaking before the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s ASEAN International Conference on Tourism and Climate Change in Legazpi City yesterday, Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III, asserted that the ‘new normal’ it will bring will compromise the long-aspired-for…

Development, Economy, Environment, Government

First Quarter 7.8% annual growth in Ph economy: The Bottom Line

June 3, 2013 benign0 4 Comments

Reports of economic growth in the Philippines as measured by its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reaching an annualised 7.8 percent in the first quarter of the year is sending waves of optimism rippling across Philippine society. One of the centrepieces of the newly-booming economy put up by recent reports on this economic phenomenon such as…

Economy, Money Talks

Philippine Economy blah-blah at the start of Year 2013

February 6, 2013July 14, 2013 benign0 14 Comments

So the economy is in the limelight again. Hmmmm…. What to say about the Philippine economy… hmmmm. What makes talking about the economy easy is that one need just highlight the same things again — that the Philippine economy is nothing more than an illusion propped up by “commercial activity” brought about by the flow…

Development, Economy, Media