Understanding Poverty

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 3^rd next to Thailand and China which is the 1^st 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

Juan's Problem

It was 5 in the morning of January 28 when I tuned in Myx, a Filipino music channel featuring various music videos from different genres both popular and not and some from the late 1990s. The show Take5 features Gloc-9’s popular songs that morning. Some of it touches my heart especially when I heard the songs that tell a story about poverty and Filipinos going abroad seeking for an opportunity that is not clearly visible in our country.
Understanding why poverty exist is not that easy. Social scientists dig deeper to the root cause of it. Some researchers believed that poverty may have a root cause from the country’s history, culture and foreign relations.
Unemployment is one of the main factors of poverty in the country. In 2009, National Capital Region (NCR) carries about 7 percent of the country’s total population, according from the data gathered by the National Statistical Coordination Board. In the same juncture, approximately 4 out of 10 poor individuals are unemployed in Luzon. In the second quarter of 2012, approximately 10.9 million individuals are unemployed, according to a recent survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).
This high count of unemployment rate in our country might have caused by lack of job opportunities and willingness to work.
The songs written by Gloc-9 entitled “Wala ng Natira” is pertaining to the Filipinos going abroad, looking for better or even good opportunities in order to sustain the needs of their family. I quote,

“Napakaraming guro dito sa amin ngunit 

Bakit tila walang natira

Napakaraming nurse dito sa amin

Ngunit bakit tila walang natira 

Nagaabroad sila 

(Gusto kong yumaman4x)”

These lines directly says that people belongs to poor family most likely tend to go abroad, hoping for better opportunities that could raise them up from the ashes of poverty.  But in contrary to his other song “Bakit Hindi” wherein he tells that many people just wanted to sit and stay at home waiting for some GOs and NGOs to extend their help to them. Many of our fellowmen portrays the characteristics of Juan Taman: A young boy that waited for the fruit of Guava to fall into his mouth.

I believe that we Filipinos are great. We can surpass all kinds of problems surrounding us. But before we became as great as other developed countries, we must first develop our own identity, love of country. This is for us to get out inside the box that where we are now for us to attain our dream future.