[...]ReInventing Philippines Inc., » 1. The role of government is to create wealth, not redistribute wealth[...]…

I’ve read your article. It is good.

I know that we aim to make the pie bigger but there’s a need for redistribution of wealth to ensure that the poor can be part of that growth- and ofcourse, this redistribution of wealth is spear-headed by our government.

If the focus is just to grow, the possible result would be this “the rich will be richer and poor will be poorer”. The government invest on programs to help the poor help themselves. Without this redistribution function, economic progress, i think becomes an impossibility.

I hope you get my point.

[...]ReInventing Philippines Inc., » 1. The role of government is to create wealth, not redistribute wealth[...]…

Here is a current issue that I will try to use as an example. The newly enacted Senior Citizens Law mandated all drugstore owners to “redistribute their hard-earned wealth” by ordering them not to collect VAT from our elderly citizens and at the same time give 20% discount to them. As I see it, the government’s constitutional mandate to take care of its elderly citizens is being passed on to the private merchants… a very clear case “of taking from Peter to give to Paul.”

Harnessing of the resource should be done in a just, equitable and sustainable way. As a citizenof the land, we have a just claim for the harnessing of the resource, an equitable share for those who labored in the harnessing of the resource to be put in good use. Most importantly, sustainable harnessing of the resource to ensure its continued availability for the generations to come.

Our government is tasked as the manager of the wealth of the nation. Thus, it is only just to make those person in the governme accountable even after their tenure of service. Making them accountable will make them hopefully better manager if there is a prospect of consequential effects of their actions while in office.

It is deem equitable that we amply provide for the needs of our carrer government officials and their families while dispensing their duties to the outmost of their abilities – even after their term of office – if this will bring about honest and dedicated service in return. Thus, the harnessing of the nation’s wealth will have maximum effects to the majority of its citizens.

Sustainable harnessing of resources also should also involve due considerations to the maximum benefits that will be brought about to the citizens.

At the heart is trying to cultivate what is our ‘natural’ competitive advantage.

many countries have the water, the climate, and the soil to built on agriculture. I think we have small pieces of land covered with water. We should develop our human resources, instead, and encourage investments. attract business people to do business here so that our people don’t have to go abroad looking for jobs.

Doing business is not exploitation. It is using the forces of demand and supply.

Our economy of the moment is propelled forward by three things, call center employment; government spending; and, OFW dollars. Our exports are severely limited, if not controlled by foreigners. Our farmers are pawns swaying to the music of the middlemen, oil and gas cartels control our mobility, flour and sugar businessmen control our morning padesal and a president that gets caught in traffic.

Without the call center industry, we’d get a ballooning unemployment, without government spending, regional,provincial and municipal economies will simply whither and without the OFW dollars we’d be on the fast road to hyper-inflation.

Bleak as it may seem, my take is to look back at our basic principles. What are we as a nation? We are a agricultural country, so why do we spend so much to match with the technology and process of other countries? Our rice farmer spends about 12 pesos per kilo to produce rice. Vietnam, another agricultural country produces it at 6 pesos?

Our average farmer age is about 42-48 years old. Our agricultural schools experience a steady 7 percent decline in the enrollment in agricultural courses. Our farms in the past 10 years have shown a decline in productivity of up to 6% per cropping. Land Reform and Justice is severely encumbered by fantastic laws that even Socrates would have a hard time discerning. And to think, I am just a little warm.

Who would not want to live in a successful and progressive country? But unless we learn to re-focus the meager resources that we have to where we are as a nation, as a people – we will get to where we want to be. Just as a child must crawl before he can walk, let’s make our farms and farmers grow, before we turn our sights to other things. For as long as our farmers remain slaves to the soil, to poverty to the middlemen and to an oppressive system – we will never get to where we want to go.

Take South Korea for example, the strength of its economy is not the industrial plants, but its farmers who own banks and invest in technology. America did not start as an industrialize country. It started with fields of wheat and grains and plantation crops. History is clear – for as long as farmers are hungry, the country is also hungry and we don’t need “techno-rats” to tell us about this.