by B.P. Familara
[A family living under the bridge of CAVITEX]
Poverty is an economic status of
being poor. There are many factors why poverty exists. According to C. Wright
Mills, an American sociologist, poverty has two main reasons why it exists
these are the personal troubles and public issues. Personal troubles are the
issues of every individual why they can’t find a job. Some are not qualified to
the job they’re applying in, some are over qualified to have that job, but most
often it is about the attitude of the person applying a job or their attitude
towards work. For example, if the town has population of 200 and 180 of it is employed
and only 20 are not. It is an issue that the government cannot do about because
there are a lot of opportunities but these 20 unemployed might having a hard
time in finding a job. In contrast to this, if 180 are unemployed and only 20
are employed this is what we called Public issue. This is a manifestation that
the social structure of a society has been collapsed. There are many work
forces but here are less job opportunities combined with some personal
troubles.
Poverty in our country is a product
of the two realities, the economic underdevelopment and the reality of
inequality. The unequal distribution of wealth in our country affects great to
the development of our economy. The rich becomes richer while the poor becomes
poorer. The amount of assets that our economy produces is not enough to follow
the level of sophistication of the technology that is being used by the
mainstream. The result of this is that our locally made product cannot compete
to the world market due to the durability and price differences, imported good
often cheaper than homegrown / locally produced goods, that often resulting to
bankruptcy of local businesses.
After world war two, Philippines
are next to Japan in terms of economic development but the faith of our country
is not that good as Japan. The question
lies on my mind how come we did not develop like Japan? Somehow, it lies on foreign
relationship with the US. American put their Military bases that hindered us to
explore our full potential. Our preferential agreement in the US market for
Philippine sugar, for example, shielded the favored Filipino farmers from
urgency of competition and modernization. Comparing the value of Peso to
American dollars usually makes us blind to the real situation and to think an
illusion of prosperity, prosperity that in reality we can’t even feel. We have
not paid attention in the modernization of our agriculture industry and we did
not even build more modern infrastructure. Our public education system before
was farther good than the private educational institutions. However, we let it
to be deteriorated. Nowadays, we choose to educate our children in private
schools rather than in the public, thinking that they will be trained well in
on that institution.
On the time of the presidency of
Marcos, problems during his governance took over his efforts in economic
development. He loaned billions of peso for the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, but
the money was misused and the world economy entered into recession that
resulted to our government cannot pay it. His modernization project also failed
because it is untenable. Despite the fact that late President Marcos did wrong,
we should honor him for his efforts to rebuild and develop our country, though
it was not successful.
Our bad experiences during Marcos
about modernization make us blind for the reality that we need a development.
We became paranoid, our democratic rights and freedom. During the presidency of
the first lady president, Cory Aquino, series of coups‘d’état hindered our
economic development and frightens foreign investors to invest to our
country. This coup makes our economy
frost while our population is growing fast. Thus, it results to social
imbalance and the collapsed of our social structure.
The dilemma nowadays is that the
growing economy cannot actually feel by the poor, but only by the few elites
that actually controls it. Yes, after the first decade of the 21th century, and
according to the news reports, our economy have grown and we are now 3rd
next to Thailand and China which is the 1st in Asia’s fast growing
economy.
The solution to those problem is to
the government should provide and meet the basic needs of our society. By
rebuilding social trust, the fight for corruption is one of the best example,
and re-establishing the social structure of opportunities. Re-establishing it
absolutely will produce more job opportunities, but it is still depending on
the cooperation and participation of the people to this move.
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This article is based on the article published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer,on July 15, 2000 with the same title
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