Last year, in April 2011 , Aquino was “shocked” by rising poverty and hunger. I wonder whether Aquino will still be “shocked”, “more shocked” or he has become “shock-proof” to the adverse outcomes of Aquinomics and noynoying.
After a year of pulling temper tantrums against Arroyo and Corona while awarding contracts to his oligarch cronies – unemployment, poverty and hunger has gotten worse.
The latest SWS Q1 2012 survey came up with the following results:
- Families rating themselves as Mahirap or Poor rose to 55%
- Hunger at record-high 23.8% of families; Moderate Hunger at 18.0%, Severe Hunger at 5.8%
- Adult unemployment at record-high 34.4%; 13% lost their jobs involuntarily, 15% resigned
The rise in joblessness, hunger, and poverty comes despite of:
- Aquino’s celebration of PSE’s record highs
- Expectations of PH credit ratings upgrade
- The much vaunted CCT Subsidyand its pursuit of making “economic growth statistics real to the people,” – It can be recalled that “the Aquino administration on its first year scaled up the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the previous administration by expanding household coverage by 1.3 million and doubling the program’s budget. The 4Ps under the 2011 National Budget has four components:
- Supplemental Feeding Program;
- Food for Work Program for internally displaced persons;
- Rice Subsidy Program; and
- Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program.
The CCT program gets the bulk of the 4Ps budget. The said program is seen as a social protection instrument and a tool to empower people to rise above poverty by increasing household income and improving human capital, among others. And that’s not even counting the fuel subsidies, sugar subsidies, renewables subsidies and loans, grants, and bonds incurred by the government”
- Aquino Support for foreign equity caps
What’s the point in having all these ratings and statistics when you are jobless, poor, and hungry? 
If anything, the only parties that gained from the economy were MERALCO (and its expensive rolling blackouts); PLDT and Globe (and its expensive network connectivity issues); PETRON (chaired by BSA’s uncle Danding).
Noynoy said that “We might have in-and-out investors that — I don’t know if we can count on them to the same degree that they would support the drives of our country.” By the looks of it, MERALCO, PLDT and Globe, and PETRON can’t also be counted to support the drives of the country.
The other question that Aquino has been vague on is this – are the country’s “drives” – the correct drives to take because obviously – the drives are going straight to an economic cliff faster than you can say Porsche Carrera, Mendoza, Scarborough, Corona, or Grace Lee.
Aquino can impeach the entire Supreme Court if he wants to – but it’s not going to generate more jobs, nor will it reduce poverty or hunger – we ‘ve had a year of trying out BS Aquino’s “drives” – and the outcomes are there for us to see.
More government, more taxes, more regulations, more welfare programs will not reduce poverty – rather it will stifle business, increase joblessness, poverty and hunger. 
To top it off economic growth has drastically declined. As reported on Bloomberg – “Growth in the $200 billion economy slowed to 3.7 percent last year from 7.6 percent in 2010. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have forecast expansion will accelerate to 4.2 percent in 2012, aided by government spending.”
I shudder as the cabinet of BS Aquino makes more pronouncements about bigger government revenue and bigger government spending – it means Filipinos will have less money left to spend for health, education, food, shelter, and retirement because government took their income away via taxes.
It’s gonna get worse – with no end in sight – not for Aquinomics anyway.
Aquino’s anti-corruption rhetoric is a ruse. The Philippines has lots of corruption because of big government and high taxes. To reduce corruption, drain the lake – downsize government; reduce taxes; eliminate government regulations that restrict the market. For example, eliminate and repeal the rice trading controls. This leads to the elimination of the artificial crime called “smuggling”.
After all, why should government restrict consumer choice and give preference to higher priced lousy domestic made products and impose higher tariff on imported lower priced higher quality goods? What makes Filipino businesses more important than Filipino consumers? It is not right that the government issues regulation that put the needs of Filipino businesses over that of the Filipino consumers – that’s not fair. Having lower priced commodities such as rice allows consumers to spend more on other items such as education, health – instead of having it all eaten up by rice.Restricting imports is misguided nationalism and only harms consumers and taxpayers.
As far am concerned – it’s just another I told you so moment. 
-oOo-
“Hope is not part of the plan. Plan your work and work your plan.”
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