Tag: wealth

Philippines, the sick man of Asia “again”? No. It ALWAYS HAS been sick!

March 18, 2021 benign0 26 Comments

Certain “thought leaders” are issuing shrill commentary on the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns aimed to mitigate its effects. The fact is, most if not all countries are suffering from economic crises in varying degrees thanks to the brittle world order of intricately interdependent and interlinked economies created by “globalisation”….

Culture, Development, Economy

The world will not wait for the Philippines to recover from COVID-19

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 benign0 3 Comments

“Humanity” and all the goodness around empathy and charity sound nice on paper but, eventually, people and the rest of the world with clear pathways to the future move on. Those that are at risk of being left behind — the chronic poor, the sick and dying, and the not-so-smart — while entitled to some…

History, Society

Communist fronts like the League of Filipino Students believe they are God’s Gift to Filipino nationalism

August 12, 2019 benign0 9 Comments

Kabataan Partylist Representative Sarah Elago has it all wrong. What Filipino “nationalists” believe to be things that make a great nation are all obsolete. If we are to believe people like Elago, one would think “activism” is such a be-all-end-all of the people of a modern nation. A statement posted by the League of Filipino…

Development, Education

The Philippines is going down a FAKE development path

June 17, 2019 benign0 7 Comments

The Philippines is a vulnerable society — vulnerable because, though it is resource-rich, it is almost wholly dependent on external capital for its survival. Japan and Singapore, for example, are resource-poor countries, yet they are among the world’s most prosperous and highly-developed. The Philippines along with many African and South American countries lie in a…

Development, Economy

Filipinos’ addiction to OFW remittances is incompatible with economic development

June 10, 2019 benign0 5 Comments

Look more closely at the facts surrounding the much-vaunted stellar growth of the Philippine over the last several years and one will find the same old disturbingly-familiar drivers of that growth. Or, rather, it is the absence of the right drivers that is more disturbing. Growth is still chugging along the traditional way — through…

Development, Economy, Money Talks

China knows how things “work” in the Philippines

November 21, 2018November 18, 2019 benign0 37 Comments

Indeed, the Chinese know how thing “work” in the Philippines. They have, after all, been prominent figures in Philippine industry since the Middle Ages. They know enough to fly above the radars of the natives and deal directly with the powers-that-be. That strategy of knowing and dealing with the right people continues to this day….

Culture, Economy, Money Talks

There’s NO Philippine economy “in the time of Marcos and Duterte”. Only The Philippine Economy. Period

October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 benign0 17 Comments

As I write this, there is some sort of symposium conducted by “PhD Candidate” JC Punongbayan of the UP School of Economics dubbed “Numbers don’t lie, people do: Dissecting the Philippine economy in the time of Marcos and Duterte” currently in progress. One does not really need to attend this event seeing the title and…

Economy

Whining about inflation (and politicising it) won’t solve Philippine poverty

September 6, 2018 benign0 60 Comments

Inflation is like taxation. It is a certainty. The only thing that is not certain about inflation is the rate at which it gallops (or trots) along. Sometimes we enjoy low inflation rates and sometimes we suffer high inflation rates. At an individual level, we have no control over the behaviour of this ill-understood economic…

Economy, Money Talks