i got to scan this old article i did a year ago,but still worth reading hehe
judt something to "update".. update this tomorrow!!!
Just last month i visited MAnila. Pretty excited to see long time friends, buy some shit that we dont have here in Mindanao like some lokal UG cds some cheap stuffs
and sweet papers. The last time I went there was 2 years ago. We went there through hitch hiking (yeah I know. its so punk rock!) That 3 day journey riding at least 20 different cargo trucks, 3 days of striking heat and cold nights
.so pretty much prepared to get to MANILA. But this December we rode a plane. So the changes were too soon. Like an hour and 45 min kind of soon. As I walk around Quiapo and other rural places I had a complete apparition of what poverty is. Don’t get me wrong, we are not rich but what I saw in Manila is a disturbing and sad portrait of a rotten society. And I know that sooner or later other places in my home town would also be reminiscent of that. And it scared the shit out of me.....
Visions like this only hardened my question about poverty; living in a 3rd world country must have at least shaken your senses about the question of where we are actually headed. Marketed society of unfulfilled dreams is usual scenery. Best export products of people had left us dumbfounded because the idea and eagerness to earn. Earning not to make our lives easier but rather, just to have enough money to buy the rice that we need for the day. Its surely is a long road out to prosperity.
Roughly 4.7 million Filipino families, comprising about 41% of the population, currently have annual incomes below the poverty line. That cut point is set at something around a dollar per person per day. Smaller than uncle sams nephews school allowance in 3rd grade... This makes us more valid to work for anything. Whether it’s hard or degrading, we oddly forget it. Which is pretty devastating coz we got the man power, we got the resources and we got the needs but we aint got the economic wealth.
There is tremendous geographic variation, ranging from 8% of the population in Metro Manila to 60% in some of the Muslim areas of Mindanao, from 11.6% in the province of Cavite to 79.5% in the province of Romblon.
We're not just talking about absolute poverty here; we're talking about relative poverty - and structural inequality. The bottom 40% of families account for only 13.7% of total family income, while the top 10% account for 35.5%. In economic lingo, the country has a Gini coefficient of 0.4507, which represents a high level of inequality indeed.
When discussing poverty in developing countries, it is essential to avoid the many pervasive stereotypes - the poor are lazy, the poor don't take advantage of opportunities, they just don't care, and on and on But the question is what do we have left? Are we still really so numbingly innocent to think that if we just try our best we will also be at the top. NO!! We will be working for all of this elites or capitalist monsters for the rest of our lives. Maybe we could save a bit but sooner or later the pattern or cycle of a world provided for them will bite you in the neck. One of us will get sick, be in an accident of some sort and will all go back to zero and come running back to them which are unfair because this elite empowered people are unsurprisingly the minority. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. And 20% of the population in the developed nations consumes 86% of the world’s goods and resources. This situation could also be compared to the rural places also in the Philippine provinces. In Negros Occidental, for example, over 85% of the people live below the poverty line. Most available land is devoted to sugar cane, which is not competitive on the global market and is often sold at very low price in the world market. Not to mention the wage payments which are abysmal and sharecropping is a brutal display of exploitation. Of course large “hacendero” families still own most of the lands. Land reform has obviously no hope for implementation. CHILDREN are starving to death!!!
This process actually is nothing new. As a matter of fact Globalization has been around Pinas for centuries. The famous explorer Mr. Magellan and his posse sponsored by the Spanish crew landed in Cebu, particularly Mactan for 2 main agenda. He saw our islands riches and sieze to colonize it to have easy income and easy wealth and to bless and evangelized the natives with the holy graces of Christianity with the one and only true faith of their catholic church. And the seed of present day situation was then planted. Not to mention (fast forward 3 centuries) when Admiral Dewey steamed into Manila Bay. About 80% of land in the Philippines was in the public domain. since then Filipino politicians was the one who determines how our land was to be exploited and by whom. Those few who has the right connections got the timbers and mining rights. This is our resources, Mother Nature at its best and yet the Philippine state has always encouraged the extraction of this resources. Even leasing large areas for exploitation at nominal fees and ensuring zero export taxes. Such depressive acts are done in exchange of free access or quotas in Uncle Sam’s market.
Also one example of this was x President Ramos administration, he lessen the restrictions on foreign investment by giving incentive bonanzas. Investors were given a 10-year tax holiday, capital tax exemptions and a lot more that I don’t know anymore.
The consequences of these land use policies have not been pretty. You could start by mentioning the ongoing marginalization of indigenous peoples, tremendous concentration of land ownership, and environmental degradation. The net result? Perpetuation of the semi-feudal, semi-capitalist, and neocolonial character of the Philippine economy and mass displacement of indigenous communities and upland farmers.
Then many of us end up in squatter areas.
To be continued
peter
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