Political dynasts worsen joblessness, poverty

The 7.2-percent GDP rise in 2013 is meaningless to most Filipinos. Government leaders know it, but can’t bring themselves to change it.

In money terms, the economy gained P12 trillion in services and goods last year. Divided by the 100 million Filipinos, that’s P120,000 per capita income for every man, woman and child. Meaning, P10,000 per person per month. Or P50,00 a month for the average family of five.

All that is only on paper, everyone knows. In truth, most families made do with much less. The minimum-wage earner brought home only a fourth — P12,500 a month — to the housewife and three schoolchildren. Food, rent, utilities, and transportation ate up most of it.

More than half of Filipino families barely survived, as shown in Social Weather Stations polls. In the latest poverty survey, 55 in 100 — nearly 12 million households — rated themselves poor; half of them extremely so. Penury limited home budgets mostly to food. Still, 41 in 100 — nearly nine million families — hardly ate enough. Extended families and neighbors routinely helped each other out, for that’s the Filipino way. But it was tough, as 12.1 million Filipinos of working age, 27.5 percent of the 52-million labor force, were out of work.

The government has larger poll samplings and sparer baskets of basic goods to measure misery. Still, the figures were the same as SWS’. Like, extreme poverty incidence, 26 percent, or six million families; hunger rate, 24 percent, or 5.6 million families; unemployment of 7.2 percent and underemployment of 20 percent, for a total of 27.2 percent or 12 million workers.

So where did the bulk of the P12-trillion new national wealth go? Obviously to the already moneyed individuals and companies. That’s because government institutions and programs serve the rich instead of the poor.

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Take Congress, for one. The laws it passes, say, on electricity, favor regional monopolists that use new technologies for leaner workforces, at rates shocking to consumers. Same with the trillion-pesos that Congress appropriates for infrastructures, to be built by biggies that lawmakers protect.

Senators and congressmen’s political dynasties control businesses and thereby constrict employment in their locales. Like, no new hardware store may open to compete with that owned by the lawmaker’s mayor-kin. The governor causes to be hired only his and the lawmaker-kin’s supporters in, say, piers and newly licensed factories.

The economy posted GDP growths of six to seven percent in the last 15 years. But real per capita rose only 1.3 percent — one-third of Indonesia’s and one-fifth of Malaysia’s. Meaning, most Filipino families notch meager income increases. And inflation readily gnaws it away. Meanwhile, the political class continues to plunder state funds that otherwise should go to anti-poverty. Nothing is left for education, access to markets, disaster prevention, irrigation, or electrification.

The P-Noy admin promises inclusive growth — in vain. Its targets are too timorous. Like, it trained only 96,000 jobless youths in new skills under its 2011-2012 Disbursement Acceleration Program. At the time 11 million were suffering under- and unemployment. Malacañang gave P13 billion in DAP to senators who already were stealing their congressional pork barrels.

The admin’s ballyhooed reforms too are frail. It has cut away much of the graft in highways construction. But it abets new corruption by party mates. Worse, it skirts economic liberating moves, like dismantling political dynasties and freeing up elections for newcomers. –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)