Welcome debate

Last Monday, the Inquirer editorial tackled the question of whether “they are all the same, anyway.” Recent news, economics-wise, brings to mind a recent column by Tony Abaya.

First, the economics-related news: we’re seeing Won, peso slide on equities rout, risk aversion as Stock rout deepens; the panicked flee to bonds, with this, shall we say, being the money quote:

“I am sure we are in a bear market, because the mood is very negative. People no longer believe that stocks are the road to riches,” Cannae Capital Partners managing director Hugh Giddy.

“This may be a long slow grind down because earnings expectations will start to fall.”

See also Stocks mark 7th day bloodbath (in light of the above, it will be interesting to see what bloggers like stuart santiago, who’s been keeping tabs not only on the implications of the appreciating peso, but also, what economists think should be done, will have to say about this). Now I’ve heard it said, that goings-on in America are less relevant to us, than they used to be, because our economy is now more closely aligned to China’s than the USA. But even in China, all doesn’t seem to be well. See A Recipe for Disharmony:

An Asia Times article by Martin Hutchinson paints a very sobering picture about China’s bad debt situation. The latest estimate is reported to be between US$1.2 trillion and US$1.3 trillion, which would make the often touted sovereign wealth fund of US$200 billion look almost paltry, not to mention that one-third of this fund is slated for the purchase of bad loans from Chinese banks and another third to recapitalize China Agricultural Bank and China Development Bank which are destined for privatization. What is even scarier is that, according to Hutchinson, all of China’s foreign exchange reserves, to the tune of US$1.4 trillion, might be needed to plug holes in the banking system when the inevitable liquidity crisis occurs. The article also says that China’s banking system bad debts account for about 40 percent of her GDP and are in real terms about five times those of the United States, given her economy is around one-fifth the size of the latter’s.

The article then goes on to draw parallels between Latin America and China in terms of very high inequality, persistently high inflation and rampant corruption, highlighting the fact that China’s government lacks any genuine understanding of the free market and her economy is increasingly dominated by special interests, with a small entrenched elite gorging themselves (immorally and illegally) with the fruits of economic growth at the expense of the disfranchised masses.

Which brings us back to the Inquirer editorial and Tony Abaya. In his column, GMA’s Successes, he writes:

Under Cory, the Philippine GDP grew 3.5 percent in 1986. 4.3 in 1987, 6.8 in 1988, 6.2 in 1989. The coup attempt in December 1989 by then Col. Gringo Honasan and then Capt. Danilo Lim dragged the GDP down to 4.4 in 1990, and subsequently to negative 0.6 in 1991. The average GDP under Cory was 4.1 percent.

Under President Fidel Ramos, GDP grew 0.3 percent in 1992, 2.1 in 1993, 4.4 in 1994, 4.7 in 1995, 5.8 in 1996, and 5.2 in 1997. The Asian Financial Crisis that started in July 1997 dragged the GDP down to negative 0.6 in 1998 as it devastated economies all over the world. The average GDP under President Ramos was 3.1.

It should be mentioned that the low GDPs in 1992 and 1993 were due, not just to the coup attempts of Honasan-Lim in December 1989, but also to the daily power outages of up to 8-hours that plagued the economy.

And the power outages were due largely to the mothballing by President Aquino of the 620 mw Bataan nuclear power plant just before it was to be commissioned, a concession to the anti-US bases and anti-nuclear agitation of the Communist movement. The slack would have been taken up by the 300 mw Calaca plant and the 300 mw Masinloc plant, both coal-fired, but the commissioning of these plants was blocked by environmentalists.

The net effect was that thousands of businesses and industries, and tens of thousands of families were forced to buy and operate their own generators, thus creating as much pollution as, or even more than, Calaca and Masinloc put together. There is a lesson to be learned here, but I doubt if Filipinos have learned it. But I digress.

Under President Joseph Estrada, GDP grew 3.4 percent in 1999 and 4.0 in 2000, until he was deposed from office in January 2001 by a military coup d’etat pretending to be people power. The average GDP under President Estrada was 3.7 percent.

Under President Arroyo, GDP grew 1.8 percent in 2001, 4.3 in 2002, 4.7 in 2003, 6.0 in 2004, 5.1 in 2005, 5.6 in 2006 and 7.1 in 2007. The average GDP under President Arroyo was 4.94 percent. Forecasts for 2008 range from 5.0 to 6.7 percent.

(It takes GDP growth rate of at least 8 percent per annum for 20 years for an economy to reach First World status. This is the level of the achievement of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, from the 1970s to the 1990s.)

Having compared the economic performance of recent administrations, he goes on to point out that,

Under President Arroyo, the economy has developed an upward momentum. And the biggest element in this upward momentum is the remittances from overseas contract workers, which will reach $14 to !5 billion in 2007, compared to practically zero in the 1970s..

The corollary is that if Presidents Aquino, Ramos and Estrada enjoyed a $10 to $15 billion annual OCW windfall during their watch, the GDP during their presidencies would have been substantially higher. (If any reader has the annual figures for OCW remittances staring in 1980, I would appreciate receiving them.)

The other corollary is that if President Arroyo did not have this $10 to $15 billion annual OCW windfall, the Philippine economy under her management would not have grown as much as it has in the past five years.

Which is not to say, as Abaya points out, the President’s taking credit for things not entirely of her own making:

Whis is not to say that President Arroyo did not make any substantial contribution to economic growth from her own initiatives. Far from it. Her biggest success, in my opinion, is the growth of the call center-business outsourcing industry, which now employs more than 200,000 young, urban middle-class Filipinos, and is still growing fast.

If one were to revisit her Mid-term Development Plan, which was drafted at the start of her presidency in 2001, one would note that it had three major foci: agriculture, tourism and information technology or IT. So the call-center phenomenon was an Arroyo initiative and it is a major success, for which she deserves full credit.

The passage and implementation of the EVAT. is also an Arroyo success, which substantially increased government revenues, enabling it — theoretically at least — to invest more in infrastructure and social services…

….President Arroyo has also achieved moderate success in tourism, one of the three foci in her Midterm Development Plan. Tourist arrivals topped three million in 2007, for the first time ever. I say ‘moderate’ because Thailand drew 13 million tourists, Malaysia 16 million, in the same period.

In 1991, Indonesia and the Philippines drew more or less the same number of tourists: one million. Since then, Indonesia’s tourist arrivals have reached five million, despite the Bali and Jakarta bombings, while we are celebrating only three million. Don’t look now, but tiny Cambodia just topped two million in 2007, and Vietnam is investing heavily to develop its entire South China Sea coast into a tourist magnet..

President Arroyo’s third economic focus: agriculture is, in my opinion, a mixed bag. Even assuming that production has increased in some sectors, the stark fact remains that we are not self sufficient in such staples as rice, corn, sugar, poultry, etc and must import several billion dollars worth every year to meet domestic demand.

This by the country that set up the UP College of Agriculture in Los Banos (when the Americans were running this place), and hosts the International Rice Research Institute (also established by the Americans), both of which trained the agriculturists of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia etc, which ironically now surpass us in agricultural production.

Perhaps the weakness of our agriculture is not a paucity of modern technology, but an oversupply of people, because of a galloping population growth rate. In the 1970s, the Philippines and Thailand had more or less the same population size: 45 million.

Because it had a population management program all these years, in 2007 Thailand had only 65 million people, while the Philippines had 89 million. By any yardstick of commonsense, it is easier to feed, clothe, house, educate and find jobs for 65 million people than 89 million.

For this, President Arroyo must share the blame with Presidents Marcos, Aquino and Estrada, for their wishy-washy attitude towards population management and their fear of offending the Roman Catholic bishops. (Only the Protestant President Ramos dared to defy the bishops on this issue.)

But, Abaya argues, the policies for which the President deserves credit have reached their own limits:

But this has its limits, which may have been reached already, judging from the frantic efforts to sell government assets, such as those in the power sector. Without the sale of government assets, the government seems to be running out of money. Economists tell us that a government’s tax collection efforts should amount to at least 16 percent of GDP.

Even with his dictatorial powers, President Marcos could manage only 9 to 12 percent. Presidents Aquino and Ramos were able to raise it to 13 to 14 percent. President Arroyo may have been the first president to raise that percentage to 15-16 percent, but apparently not much more than that, which suggest unresolved problems from chronic tax evasion and smuggling.

And so, his conclusion?

In summary, it can be said that President Arroyo’s relative success in managing the economy can be credited largely to the $10-$15 billion windfall from OCW remittances.

Therefore it is not accurate to claim that there is no alternative to or substitute for her. In fact it can be said that the increase in workers deployed abroad — about one million a year — is due to her failure, and the failure of her predecessors, to create enough jobs in the domestic economy, forcing millions of Filipinos to seek employment abroad.

This means that she can be replaced by such reasonably qualified wannabes as Mar Roxas, Manuel Villar, Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda, or Panfilo Lacson — even by Governor Fr. Ed Among Panlilio or Antonio Meloto — and the economy would still chug along at least at the same pace as it does today, as long as whoever succeeds her enjoys the $10-$15 billion windfall from workers’ remittances.

The consequences of a recession in the USA at the start of an election year, are tackled in Economic crisis, political rebirth? in History Unfolding:

The week’s economic news makes clear that a new flock of chickens–not perhaps as large as the one that appeared in 1929, but large enough–is finally coming home to roost. The credit collapse that has begun in the housing market (and, the papers tell me, threatens to spread through unpayable credit card debt) is lowering employment, and it may get much worse. Like the two previous crises in our national life (1860-8 and 1929-45), it has been largely brought about by the unbridled ideological or economic excesses of a Prophet generation–the Transcendentals (b. 1792-1821), the Missionaries (about 1863-1884), and now, the Boomers (1943-1960.) Born into as secure an environment has humankind has been able to create, such generations begin disrupting it in young adulthood, have eaten away the foundations by mid-life, and, as they reach elderhood, have to try to find a few surviving members who can help build a new order with the help of the younger generations.

His generational approach to American politics is one that I find very attractive, since I’ve taken a similar (though far from as highly developed) one concerning our own. This is how he connects the past to the American present:

We should keep in mind that this relentless drive by people who are already rich by any standard to gain yet more money is behind our present predicament–and that it will be harder to climb out of it because the mass of people who really need more money have been getting less and less of it. The Boom generation of managers has also avenged their missionary grandparents by finding new weapons against organized labor–most notably, the weapon of outsourcing.

It is not clear that the political process is ready to deal with the crisis. Last week, Boomer Mitt Romney, who fallaciously claimed that he would bring manufacturing jobs back to Michigan, defeated Silent John McCain, who courageously recognized that those jobs are not coming back. On the Democratic side, as John Edwards fades, identity politics have taken the place of any serious discussion of issues. The question I have been pondering is whether Barack Obama, who will turn 47 this year, is really the counterpart of Abraham Lincoln (who was 51 in 1860 when he was elected), or of John Charles Fremont, the 43-year old Republican candidate in 1856, who was defeated by Compromiser James Buchanan. (If McCain should beat Obama, the parallel would be exact.)

On to other things…

Tonyo Cruz once again takes exception to my response to his comment/entry: see The difference between discreet and central. Let me work backwards and answer his question, what do I mean by “public acceptance” of the Left? Very simply: public acceptance is the refusal to condone the killing of a civilian, simply on the basis of the person being accused (and not even self-proclaimed) by the authorities of being a Leftist.

The constituency of the Left is large, indeed, per official party-list election figures for winning parties (the inclusion of Akbayan won’t go down well with some groups, so the total without it is in parenthesis, for comparison):

Bayan Muna 976,699
Gabriela Women’s Party 621,086
Anak Pawis 369,366
Akbayan ! Citizens’ Action Party 466,019

Total: 2,433,170 (1,967,151)

Comparable national election figures (NASSA-NAMFREL quick count):

Left > Gomez, Richard Independent 2,308,620
Left < Singson, Luis Lakas-CMD 3,468,039

If you use Comelec figures (PDSP is the party of Norberto Gonzales et al., you could argue also technically part of the Left):

Left = Sultan Jamalul D. Kiram III TEAM Unity – PDSP 2,488,553

Let’s argue the Left had only 1 out of every 4 votes cast for it actually counted, a potential constituency of 9,732,680. That puts it on parity with: Prospero A. Pichay, Jr. TEAM Unity – Lakas-CMD 9,798,355

The dictionary says,

dogmatism |’dôg-ma-ti-zem|
noun
the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others : a culture of dogmatism and fanaticism.
DERIVATIVES
dogmatist noun
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: via French from medieval Latin dogmatismus, from Latin dogma (see dogma ).

Which suggests that even if contrary evidence were presented, the assertions of the incontrovertibly trueness of essential principles, would continue, anyway.

Let me just point out that “revisionism” is not just any word, but a word rich in meaning for the like-minded:

revisionism |ri-‘vi-zhe-ni-zem|
noun often derogatory
a policy of revision or modification, esp. of Marxism on evolutionary socialist (rather than revolutionary) or pluralist principles.
‘ the theory or practice of revising one’s attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view.
DERIVATIVES
revisionist noun & adjective

The Master Storyteller and thus, the living magisterium of the Left, demonstrates ther rigorous use of such words in intramural Left debates (and more) and extramural debates with those who aren’t affiliated in the party.

312-317-1-Pb(2)

Essentially this is arguing apples and oranges but this is one statement that, again, belongs to the Q.E.D. department:

Public intellectuals should also take note that attempts to airbrush the Left out of Edsa 2 and the body politic has resulted in an ongoing massacre (nearly 900 extrajudicially executed, and another 200 involuntarily disappeared), in the arrest and detention of Satur Ocampo and Crispin Beltran, and in the filing of spurious charges against the legal Left which Arroyo considers a considerable threat. In the official script, the airbrushing is most intense. As if no legal movement exists, and as if Arroyo did not work with, sat with, conferred with, cooperated with the same movement she now wishes to kill after airbrushing operations.

Now that is revisionism. From culpability fully belonging to the administration, now even those opposed to it but who aren’t part of the Left, are assigned responsibility for the murders of members of the Left (or those merely suspected of belonging to the Left, particularly as the state definition is broader than some Leftists would admit the Left to be). It ignores the non-Left voices raised in indignation and protest over the killings, the efforts of those who tried to bring the situation to the attention of the world, since Filipinos were proving pretty much unmoved.

And this is what I mean by dogmatism. Tactical considerations aside, much as the Left will criticize those it considers non-Leftists for branding them with certain names, it is something they do so, all the time: distinctions are only to be made by the Left but non-Left-originating distinctions on the other hand, are simply unacceptable. the underlying message is pretty much the same as the administration’s: same-same (and I won’t go into the public support given by some members of the Left for Joker Arroyo’s senatorial reelection in 2007).

Now what did I mean when I said, “Since 2001, however, the Left has found itself unable to really find a place for itself in legitimate politics”? First, legitimate politics for me are obviously non-revolutionary politics, that is, participation, without molestation, in electoral politics; and as for not really finding a place, by this I mean that the government has, with some success, mobilized public opposition to the Left by calling all Leftists communists, and by generally showing itself unmoved by local opinion in contrast to the way it’s been disturbed by foreign concern over the liquidation of Leftists. And again, in the absence of a nationwide poll specifically asking people how they feel about the Left, one can only go by what one hears and reads, and that has been on the whole unsympathetic to the Left.

What is my factual basis? The murders. The indifference far too many, and outright delight far too many, have shown; the concern far too few have demonstrated. the support, tacit or overt, for the “all-out war” policy.

Again, this is a question of interpretation, not of “truth.” The truth is obvious. Civilians are being killed, on the pretext that it is justifiable to kill them based on their ideological beliefs. This is wrong; those who justify it, are wrong.

Tonyo ends with,

I hope Manolo will be kind enough to recognize the advances made by the Left not just in mobilizing “warm bodies” for elite-led mobilizations, but also in public discourse, in reframing the public debate, in offering the public some alternatives to the status quo, among others.

This is not mine to recognize, out of the kindness of my heart; it’s to be assumed. My criticism of where we are, now, is that we’re far off from assuming what Tonyo wants recognized. But it is a wonderful thing that he takes the time to painstakingly point out where my assertions may be too sweeping, or demanding that they be clarified. It is an exercise not only in public debate, but in fraternal correction; certainly, our exchange is something the administration, for one, would rather not happen at all, and most certainly wouldn’t want repeated by members of the public.

In his blog entry Death of a cycling companion (and the latest activist killing), Howie Severino describes how a statistic for officialdom is a tragedy, for him. And points to what separates Tonyo from those he disagrees with: it is his comrades who are being killed.

Philippine Politics 04 reiterates his disagreement with my views concerning the victory of Joseph Estrada in 1998.

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Manuel L. Quezon III.

131 thoughts on “Welcome debate

  1. a voter votes for only 1 partly list and has the option to vote for 12 senators. hindi yata magandang comparison 🙂

  2. That *Inquirer* editorial you cited said in its last paragraph:

    “When the youth say “they” are all the same, they obviously don’t include themselves. And if they are the majority (which they are) then it means the youth can seize the day―but don’t want to. They have judged, but refuse to be judged themselves.”

    I don’t know if it is THAT obvious and certainly it cannot be said with acceptably certainty that they “refuse to be judged themselves”. That’s reading too much into the apathy that the youth exhibited through the lens of the elderly mind.

    Young people simply have their whole lives ahead of them. They are in a unique position to determine how they want to spend that life from their selfish perspective (which they are entitled to). Young Filipinos who go or choose to not care it seems simply find no personal benefit in investing their abundant time and energies in something they perceive to be a dud.

    A society that views young people as property rather than as assets cannot comprehend this SIMPLE reality.

    Back in the days when most of the world’s people were relatively equally poor, it made sense to invest in one’s own society (there was no 1st World to migrate to and no 3rd World to languish in). Nowadays, there is an abundance of options for young people and a far more enormous gap between the fabulous First World and the wretched Third World. They can (a) choose to apply themselves to societies that appreciate and AMPLY reward their talents or (b) stay put and flog what is essentially a dead horse.

    It’s a no-brainer in my book.

  3. Read the PDF file. Communists don’t speak like this, do they? I’ve read communists articles from England and the US. They are not as obscure and as opaque and full of jargon as this… what is it? Intramurals? I see that people have died because of your purely idiotic love of jargon. That’s why these people become communists: communist dogma flatters their intellectual pretensions.

  4. Nobel Economics prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has this to say about GDP:

    “Among the economics profession there has been a strong sense for a long while that gross domestic product is not a good measure. It doesn’t measure changes in well-being, it doesn’t measure comparisons of well-being across countries,” he said.

    Thus, if political leaders “are trying to maximize GDP and GDP is not a good measure, you are maximizing the wrong thing and it can be counterproductive,” he said.

    http://www.gnh-movement.org/press_detail.php?id=120

  5. “I’ve read communists articles from England and the US. They are not as obscure and as opaque and full of jargon as this… what is it? Intramurals?”

    Commies in general are bad enough.

    FILIPINO commies take the badness of communism to even lower levels.

    Go figure. 😉

  6. “Of the youth: They were led by a charming man in Edsa II. Now Jim Paredes has fled the country.”

    Jim Paredes tore up his Green Card in a moment of monumental stupidity back in the heady aftermath of Edsa I. Not too many people get that second chance he enjoys today in Australia. He is an old dog who seems to be successfully learning new tricks (and thus expanding the breadth of what he is able to comprehend — outside that small square of traditional Pinoy thinking) in a new and challenging — but far more fair — environment.

    A lot of those who choose to stay (and grandstand about it) have options up their sleeves (some of their parents went to the U.S. just to give birth and lock in a Green Card for their offspring). Kudos to those who actually manage to leave without the benefit of those options afforded people like Paredes.

  7. just a correction, benign0: if someone went to the usa to give birth, their kid doesn’t get a green card. their kid gets us citizenship, period.

  8. Jeg, many economists also think that GDP is just that, a “gross” measure of economic performance. Using it alone can grossly mislead people into believing that growth is really happening when, in fact, it is not. Economic performance is better judged by other indices or their combination (Gini index of inequality, balance of payments, purchasing power parity, consumer price index, etc.). Try using them and you may find that, the country appears running fast only to stay in the same place.

    Sounds absurd to many, but Bhutan’s proposal to use GNH (Gross National Happiness) may be better for pleasure-seeking citizens than the wily politicians!

  9. If the Left is able to transcend its dogma, it will be better able to translate the successes in other countries to its advantage. After all, two of the most successful economies in the region (China and Vietnam) are run by Communist governments. A little bit further afield, you have Kerala (in India) which has achieved the equivalent of first world levels of Human Development under the ruling Communist party.

  10. “The constituency of the Left is large, indeed, per official party-list election figures for winning parties (the inclusion of Akbayan won’t go down well with some groups, so the total without it is in parenthesis, for comparison):”

    well, you know how it is with “some people”…

  11. MLQ3

    “Now I’ve heard it said, that goings-on in America are less relevant to us, than they used to be, because our economy is now more closely aligned to China’s than the USA.”

    I’ve heard that said too by rosy scenario pundits.

    But here’s what they ignore : our economy is now more closely aligned to China whose economy is closely aligned to America.

  12. MB: which brings up the interesting (and not just theoretically) question: what if both economies are fucked?

    because if there’s a spill-over to us, then you have a government unable to crow “the peso is high and the stock market is strong.” which goes to a concern i’ve expressed for some time: you may be able to hold things together, because your domestic shortcomings are compensated for by a benign foreign business environment. but if that goes away, you’re left purely with your domestic shortcomings.

    and in such a situation, if you do not enjoy widespread domestic support, then government’s deprived of a public opinion buffer at a time when it will have to make unpopular decisions to keep the country afloat and tide it over until things get sunny again.

  13. “and in such a situation, if you do not enjoy widespread domestic support, then government’s deprived of a public opinion buffer at a time when it will have to make unpopular decisions to keep the country afloat and tide it over until things get sunny again.”

    Goes to the heart of the fundamental weakness of ultra-representative democracy and how fatal an application it is to an intellectually-underdeveloped society with no track record of bottom-up achievement.

    Kung baga, in the U.S. this weakness is buffered by Americans’ inherent ability to achieve. In the Philippines where there is no track record of collective achievement emanating at the grassroots and indigenous private enterprise, the society’s fortunes are imprisoned by the six-year electoral cycle it had doomed itself to dance to.

  14. MLQ3,

    Mismo!

    And if both economies are fucked then will the rest of the world follow?And then what happens to OFWs?

    And then who will buy the assets that Gloria is privatizing to inflate her revenue?

    If, but hopefully not, a serious recession occurs in the US, we will see whether Gloria’s economic policies have any substance to them or whether they are only ampaw like FVR’s which collapsed when the Asian crisis hit.

    Gloria concentrated on doctoring the books to make our county look attractive to investors and lenders rather than on spending for infrastructure, education, and health when she had the money to spend from VAT, sale of assets, remittances, trade surpluses and all that. Mayors are now complaining of cuts in their IRAs.

    Does she think we have enough in foreign reserves to weather a global economic meltdown? Will 50 billion dollars or less save an unhealthy and poorly educated people who live in a country with limited transportation and communication infrastructure?

  15. Benign0, in terms of bottom-up achievement, the Philippine economy has been sustained by the collective efforts of the grassroots. When the 1983 crisis came, it was the ‘underground economy’ (aka your ‘indigenous private enterprise‘) that helped us survive while the rich salted their dollars abroad. Today, as Abaya notes above, it is the remittances of the millions of OFW’s who buffer against a lackluster oligarch-led government.

  16. You know, I get really, REALLY, dissed when the apathy word comes about. In all my experiences working with and training young people, apathy is the LAST thing in their minds.

    Surprising? It shouldn’t: part of being young is being passionate. But young people are only passionate about the things that, as benigno has pointed out, they either find worthy of their time, or believe in.

    I saw both on the streets of the Second People Power, the young who found it worth their time to be on EDSA – it had somehow become the in thing then! Hey, Ma, I’m on EDSA!!! – alongside the young who believed that the Philippines is better than an envelope kept closed or a dancing senator.

    Don’t blame us for not acting or believing. Don’t blame us for being quiet. Don’t blame us if we don’t do another EDSA. We gave you a chance that second time around.

    Rather than call the young apathetic, perhaps the young should be convinced why it should care in the first place.

    And if some insensitive smartass retorts with, “ano pa ba kailangan nyo?”, well perhaps that should be a question the questioner should ask him or herself, neh? I mean, why is it so easy for young people to go to a GK Build, and even to go back to one, but you can’t even convince people who supposedly hate Gloria – wow, look at the surveys! – to kick her out?

  17. “Your generalizations and racist remarks sound serious but hahaha”

    People who are quick to cry “racism!” at the drop of a hat tend to be those who are imprisoned by chronic case of victim mentality.

  18. “it was the ‘underground economy’ (aka your ‘indigenous private enterprise‘) that helped us survive while the rich salted their dollars abroad. Today, as Abaya notes above, it is the remittances of the millions of OFW’s who buffer against a lackluster oligarch-led government.”

    Three points:

    (1) Is “survival” the best you can come up with in terms of a benchmark for ACHIEVEMENT?

    (2) Again you blame the rich’s “salt[ing] their dollars abroad” for the broader issue of the society’s chronic inability to prosper. Tsk tsk. you’ve got victim mentality written all over your face, dude.

    (3) OFW remittances — how long can we survive on that? That our society is so pathetically dependent on that merely highlights the chronic failure that is Pinoy society.

  19. Rob’ Ramos,

    Well said. Maybe the old fars here whose minds have been conditioned by decades of lawyerspeak need to be re-acquainted with the actual SIMPLICITY of the situation:

    (1) the elderly mind is imprisoned by its beholdenness to no-results traditions and the primitive notion that young people are to be spoken to rather than spoken WITH.

    (2) young people have far more options today than what today’s old farts had in their own youth. They expect to be told WHY before they can be expected to DO.

    (3) The WHY needs to be convincingly fresh enough to today’s youth. If all we see today are the same old campaign slogans and the tired old rallying cries of aging leftists and Edsa “revolution” veterans, then we will have lost them already

    (4) All the elderly have to offer today (as Mr. cvj will attest to) is the promise of the next OFW remittance instead of assurance of stable PARENTAL PRESENCE in the most formative years of the next generation of Pinoys.

  20. It has finally dawned on me what bengin0’s recommendation is to solve the country’s problems. I called to mind all his previous comments that Ive had the privilege to read. Benny’s solution is this: Migrate. The utter SIMPLICITY of this solution! Must be why I missed it.

    Forgive me, benny, for taking this long.

  21. Benigno,

    “People who are quick to cry “racism!” at the drop of a hat tend to be those who are imprisoned by chronic case of victim mentality.”

    Hahahahaha. And you’re a psychiatrist too!

    Should I call you Dr Phil?

  22. Benny’s solution is this: Migrate. The utter SIMPLICITY of this solution!

    make this solution even simpler: when you migrate, POR FAVOR, please stash along the current leaders in your luggages.

  23. Should I call you Dr Phil?

    phil for philippines?

    that will totally disintegrate his system.

  24. rob’ramos:that’s exactly the kind of puerile whining that makes people discount the youth.

    Don’t blame us for not acting or believing. Don’t blame us for being quiet. Don’t blame us if we don’t do another EDSA. We gave you a chance that second time around.

    WTF? Acting for a cause, or believing in one – these are choices we make. We don’t need to be given a reason to believe. And we don’t need to be given a reason to speak up either. Either you speak up or you don’t. The stupidity of other around you is no excuse for your own refusal to go beyond your own self-indulgent, hedonistic, comfort zone. Oh, and who exactly did you give a chance to? You mean EDSA2? I suppose you think the youth waS some frigging cavalry that saved the day and that the youth have to be thanked for that? C’mon man. You talked about youth having passion. True enough. But you’ve just proven that the youth – or at least, your kind of youth – do so adore drama. Newsflash! We are not some army that other people mobilize; we are not fremen waiting to “give” some upstart atreides a “chance” to use our power. More to the point, we are not some outside group or privileged subset that the rest of the flipinos need to convince to help them. You’re a filipino too, believe it or not, for all your pretensions to being a westernized global citizen. and if you’re truly not apathetic, then you should not just be waiting in the wings for someone to come along that you can support.

    And if some insensitive smartass retorts with, “ano pa ba kailangan nyo?”, well perhaps that should be a question the questioner should ask him or herself, neh?

    This tired old trick of supposedly turning the tables on the person asking the question is just a roundabout way of saying that you don’t know the answer. Don’t be a sissy. Either answer the question or admit that you don’t know how to.

    I mean, why is it so easy for young people to go to a GK Build, and even to go back to one, but you can’t even convince people who supposedly hate Gloria – wow, look at the surveys! – to kick her out?

    Because GK provides the rush of instant gratification. You sweat it out for an hour, you already get bragging rights. You build a house, you see it right there in front of you. It’s gratifying. You’re ego swells up because you were able to make a tangible good appear right before your very eyes. But the work of building and defending democracy – like kicking out a hated president – that doesn’t offer instant gratification. But it requires more conviction than picking up a hammer and pounding in a few nails. And it is not necessarily a mark of maturity that kids go to GK. For many, It’s just a new way of being cool. And if you think that that is proof that you’re not apathetic … well, then you’re just pathetic.

  25. I mean, why is it so easy for young people to go to a GK Build, and even to go back to one, but you can’t even convince people who supposedly hate Gloria – wow, look at the surveys! – to kick her out? – Rob Ramos

    Let me guess…because you don’t feel that it is your responsibility to stand up for those who were cheated of their right to vote?

  26. rob, off hand, some thoughts. if you go to GK you don’t run the risk of being tear-gassed or truncheoned on behalf of some old fart. also, you can go to a GK build and go home and forget about it until the next time.

    but i am very curious about the idea that someone needs convincing to care. one would suppose caring should be the default condition. but since the reality is there, and the caring’s absent, then indeed, how do people get to care, again?

    personally i think the problem is that the transmittal of culture broke down so you can’t expect people to care if they haven’t been grounded in how government ought to work, how citizens ought to be engaged, etc., etc.

  27. Sometimes I think that we older ones have to share the blame on why today’s middle class youth turned into cellphone-toting, gadget-loving, Starbucks-sipping, trend-following, apathetic fashionistas. But then again maybe not.

    The malady of the middle class is that it identifies itself with the ‘elite’. The middle class is the most class-insecure of all classes, hungry for the attention of the elite, asking for approval from them, begging to be adopted into their social circles — to be identified as jologs is anathema. Perhaps that’s why they have abdicated their traditional role as leaders of the masa.

  28. Sometimes I think that we older ones have to share the blame on why today’s middle class youth turned into celfone-toting, gadget-loving, Starbucks-sipping, trend-following, apathetic fashionistas. But then again maybe not.

    The malady of the middle class is that it identifies itself with the ‘elite’. The middle class is the most class-insecure of all classes, hungry for the attention of the elite, asking for approval from them, begging to be adopted into their social circles — to be identified as jologs is anathema. Perhaps that’s why they have abdicated their traditional role as leaders of the masa.

  29. Aha! One mystery solved. Spell it celfone (instead of c-e-l-l-p-h-o-n-e) and it passes MLQ3’s spam filter.

  30. mlq3:true, GK is a safer alternative. but for some of the youth, safer isn’t always the more attractive option. so i guess it all depends on who is doing the choosing.

    cvj: i think so too, uncle.

    jeg: in a sense, i think you may be right about parents …

  31. I have a friend who goes to GK building projects for the “babes.” it seems GK building projects also draws beautiful foreigners who’s also on a guilt-absolving trip. not that GK is bad. only that some people have the wrong motivations.

    well, that’s the youth for Rob.

    hey, am i still included in this demographic?

    as for our billions of dollars in reserves acting as buffer when a worldwide recession does happen (and it will happen since the US and China are now perched precariously on that posn) it will all be useless. methinks the world will switch back to the gold standard. either that or the euro becomes the new international currency.

  32. Read the PDF file. Communists don’t speak like this, do they? I’ve read communists articles from England and the US. They are not as obscure and as opaque and full of jargon as this… what is it? Intramurals? I see that people have died because of your purely idiotic love of jargon. That’s why these people become communists: communist dogma flatters their intellectual pretensions. — BrianB

    Yes, Pinoy commies speak like this! How could I ever forget? When I was 17, a freshman studying under the leafy confines of Diliman, I was so enarmored with becoming a communist. It took only one thing to shatter my fantasy of working for the masses ek-ek: reading Jose Maria Sison’s book, Philippine Society and Revolution and adjudging it as the most pretentious, probably worst book ever written (yukk, what a dud, and I waited for one month so that I could finally borrow it from the library).

    It figures, Joma was an English major in college. The worst thing that could happen to a movement is to fall under the spell of an aspiring poet/writer for a leader who fell victim to dogma or fanaticism.

    Lol, the uring manggagawa have long been had by this guy whose ass is safely esconsed in Utretch while his flock are out fighting it out here against Gloria’s army.

  33. Inidoro,

    I meant Dr Phil that fat bald fuck who dishes out tough love psychobabble on Oprah Winfrey’s show.

  34. Devils, at 26 i think you still are. I was told that the ‘youth’ category ends at 40 so that means i also have a few months more to go.

  35. “one would suppose caring should be the default condition. but since the reality is there, and the caring’s absent, then indeed, how do people get to care, again”

    It is a “default condition” if the caring you are talking about is directed to other humans. But if this is about the caring directed towards one’s country, it’s a bit presumptious to consider this a “default condition”.

    Just because one is baptised a Catholic doesn’t mean this person wanted or even cared to be Catholic in the first place. Similarly so, just because one is born on a bunch of rocks known laughably as “the Philippines” does not necessarily mean one wanted to or even cared to be Filipino in the first place.

    I’m sure tens of millions of Pinoys living in the Philippines will attest to the REALITY that they’d rather be somewhere else and rather be something else other than Filipino. Just ask the executives who market skin whiteners for their latest sales stats and you’ll catch my drift. 😉

    Unless being “Filipino” stands for SOMETHING that one can be objectively proud of, the term will forever mean squat to the average teenager who craves to see and be seen in the latest Starbucks cafe working continuously on refining their American twang.

  36. devils: re

    I have a friend who goes to GK building projects for the “babes.” it seems GK building projects also draws beautiful foreigners who’s also on a guilt-absolving trip. not that GK is bad. only that some people have the wrong motivations.

    voluntourism, i think its called. and those beautiful foreign types, voluntourists.

  37. “I was told that the ‘youth’ category ends at 40 so that means i also have a few months more to go”

    On the contrary, youth is a state of mind characterised by openness to new ideas and outside-the-square thinking.

    It is when you start imprisoning your mind in old ideas and no-results traditions, stop evaluating new ones simply because they are *different*, and place a premium on conformity that one can truly be categorised as an Old Fart.

  38. Re: Tonyo Cruz

    I wonder if he would care to explain why the communists endorsed Joker Arroyo in 2007?

  39. I might add that one who uses age as a determinant of how youthful or elderly one is is a typical specimen of that species known as Old Farts. 😀

  40. It is a “default condition” if the caring you are talking about is directed to other humans. But if this is about the caring directed towards one’s country, it’s a bit presumptious to consider this a “default condition”. – benign0

    That reminds me of my conversation with my best friend back in high school. He was asking me what does love of country mean and why should there be such a thing. At that time, i told him that perhaps ‘love of country’ meant ‘love of our fellow countrymen’ and he said that put in that way, that is something he can accept. Today i realize that love of country is something more than that.

    I’m sure tens of millions of Pinoys living in the Philippines will attest to the REALITY that they’d rather be somewhere else and rather be something else other than Filipino. Just ask the executives who market skin whiteners for their latest sales stats and you’ll catch my drift. – Benign0

    You seem to be confusing Filipino as a racial category which it is not.

    Unless being “Filipino” stands for SOMETHING that one can be objectively proud of, the term will forever mean squat to the average teenager who craves to see and be seen in the latest Starbucks cafe working continuously on refining their American twang. – Benign0

    As the Korean who wrote us that Open Letter said, it works the other way around. Love of country is not like romantic love in which you love someone because of their attributes. It’s more like love of family which is more unconditional and less utilitarian in nature. I don’t expect you to understand though.

    On the contrary, youth is a state of mind characterised by openness to new ideas and outside-the-square thinking. – benign0

    I take it you’re over forty.

  41. On the contrary, youth is a state of mind characterised by openness to new ideas and outside-the-square thinking.

    Ah, the irony.

  42. @cvj, you think? and i thought, the youth demographic only consisted of high school and college students. and the late 30’s already starting their mid-life.

    @rom, hehee. that made me laugh.

    I’d like some of them voluntourists to go with my voluntourism, please.

  43. Benigno is a lost soul, floating amongst us, who is awaiting entrance to the coldest, lowest part of Dante’s hell. Tough luck Benigno, that part of hell is reserved for those who are trecherous to kin and trecherous to country. Ice, ice, baby.

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