(Photo source: Inquirer)
Did you ever wonder why our government, constitution and laws are so pro-poor? Well, all you have to do is look at a Yellowtard LP rally, and you’ll find many nuns and clergy people holding placards. Catholicism indeed holds a tight grip on the country’s policies and it thrives on a pro-poor philosophy, always siding on the weak, underprivileged and less fortunate.
Being pro-poor actually gives incentives for the poor to remain in their state of poverty. How does that happen? When the state provides freebies like rice and housing to the poor, you actually encourage people to not strive to improve their quality of life. The state is in fact feeding laziness and the mendicant, lethargic mentality and attitude that prevail in poor communities.
Should the poor have the same rights as the rich/educated?
Family Size. At the moment, the state provides equal rights for families of either rich or poor to get as big as anyone wants it to be? But the poor have no capacity to support a large number of children. So why does the state permit this? Why doesn’t it have some sort of one-child policy for low-income couples?
Instead of many professionals nowadays getting married and having children (yes, many are actually gays I know), we have the people least qualified to support a large family in the slums multiplying like rats in damp sewers. We can always blame the lack of education for these poorest of the poor which makes them incapable of making wise calculated decisions. But why does the state allow this by not enacting laws that will prevent this from happening?
If we allow a one-child policy for low-income couples to proceed, each generation of Filipinos will incrementally shift from 20% poverty incidence, to 15%, and down to 10%. Till one morning: we will just wake up to find no more slums exist when we walk along Pasig River.
Right of Suffrage. The right to vote is currently given to every Filipino, as well as the right to run for office. If we set a rule for example that only those with proper minimal education can participate in elections, would this not give an incentive for the poor to finish schooling?
We should not have a full-blown democracy at this stage if we want to progress demographically. If we want fewer poor-quality people in government leadership, we should not allow poor decision makers to have a say in elections. The High School level (grade 12) requirement can filter out these less qualified people from determining the results of elections.
As an added benefit, our politicians will not have to vote-buy these poor people as they would be rendered useless to them for Election Day. Now that’s two birds with one stone.
Super-Pinoys: Breeding the Right Kind of Filipinos
What we have now is a setup where the weak thrive and even multiply. If you were a farmer who owned a ranch, you would want the best cattle to out-breed the inferior. Normally, the farmer will choose the superior bull to pass on its genetic material to the next generation. This can be done on-purpose artificially.
By failing to hand-pick those qualified to generate the next-generation of Filipinos, we have surrendered to letting nature simply take its course, rather than artificially creating a better breed of Pinoys. In tropical countries, it is the cockroaches, rats and flies that thrive more in number than eagles. Unless we do something radical to shift the income-bracket demography of Philippine society, we will forever be swamped by zombies – poor, uneducated, dysfunctional.
Laws and Vision
The huge flaw in Philippine policy-making is the absence of a unification of our laws and our vision for the country. Those who formulate the laws do not have a clear vision of what they want the country to become.
For example, if we truly wanted a country with a comfortable modern public transport system, we could have created laws that prohibited jeepneys that did not have air-conditioning to ply our roads. Or we could have had laws that prohibited jeepneys from squeezing in more people than it has seats for. And if we were really ambitious about developing our own “sariling atin” technology, we could have had a law that required all jeepneys to have engines and gearboxes designed and made in the Philippines – which could have opened up immense opportunities for Pinoy engineers to stay in the country rather than go abroad to work.
Laws are our sails and rudders that will direct us to the destination we seek to reach. We cannot just allow the wind to dictate our course based on whatever random direction it happens to blow us to.
Shhhhh… it’s not “anti-poor”, it’s actually “pro-education”
I know the word “anti-poor” will not sit well with a lot of Filipinos, and can even bring about violent protests. So what about “pro-education” as the new battle cry of Philippine policymakers?
If only people with a High School degree can vote, then it does not necessarily discriminate against the poor since public education till High School is free. Any person can get a degree, whether rich or poor. And if only people with a High School diploma can have more than one child, then it is not necessarily “anti-poor” as well. It only discriminates against the lazy.
The next time around that we get a chance to change the constitution, please keep these principles in mind. Remember, we can shape whatever Philippines we want to have in the future. But in order to do that, we need precise and calculated policies specifically oriented towards making it a reality. We can no longer just be carried away by girly emotional clichés and slogans waved by activists who have no particular vision and strategy for the country.
Ask yourselves, have these rallying activists ever brought the country anywhere since the time of Cory? We are still pathetically the only country around here just known for YELLOW bananas, mangoes, and pineapples, while our other neighbors in the region are producing high-tech state-of-the-art products. Imagine, even starving North Korea is already into rocket science.
In the end, it is the poor who will be thanking the State the most for its “anti-poor” policies. Let’s call in Mang Juan for a short testimony:
I am a poor carpenter who only finished 6th grade and is married to a household helper. We originally wanted to have 7 children, since we have always heard “ang mga anak ay kayamanan”. I was hoping at least one could finish College and become an OFW to provide for us all. But thanks to our government which started to implement a one-child policy for us low-income folks. At first, I wanted to join the protest rallies being held by the Catholic nuns and the Yellows, but then I realized that it really made more sense. We can now afford to provide stuff like Nike shoes and even an iPod to our only son, who is studying hard to finish High School now. Otherwise, all our children would have been just wearing slippers to school if there were 7 of them. My son is now determined to finish schooling because he wants to earn the right to vote. He said he will vote for Duterte’s son instead of Manny in the next elections because he likes the family’s brand of iron-fisted leadership.
In conclusion, anti-poor is actually pro-poor. Gets?
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