People Power and Prosperity

, I recently gave a presentation at the Forum on People Power and Poverty Reduction (Celebrating the Silver Anniversary of EDSA 1) organized last February 23, 2011 at the Institute of Social Order (ISO), Ateneo de Manila University. This was organized by several NGOs in coordination with the Cabinet Cluster on Poverty Reduction (which is composed of secretaries of DSWD, NAPC, among departments). I gave a presentation on economic alternatives (after the one by Freedom from Debt Coalition President Ric Reyes on a critique of the "EDSA Economy" - check it out here).

I began by saying that maybe, all government interventions should go beyond the meager dream of poverty reduction and the proverbial "providing food for the table". Our generation (EDSA Babies - Generation Y) ought to have dreams more ambitious than that. I then proposed that the theme of an economic alternative should be, instead of poverty reduction, prosperity - the creation of spiraling wealth that will increase incomes, employment and productivity. We should go beyond palliative economics and instead address the roots of poverty.

It is with this thought in mind that I delivered my presentation:

Towards a Modern and Prosperous Philippines on Prezi

(If it doesn't appear in your browser, try clicking the Read More link below)

The presentation was also to promote FDC's HANEP 2020 - an alternative national economic development program that focuses on creating an equitable and just Philippine society by promoting asset reform, ecologically-sound industrialization, and technological leapfrogging. The document is in its very early stages, and is currently being refined through FDC's internal processes and consultation with sectors. You can view the draft at the end of this blog entry (a Scribd document).

Progress of Civilization: from BBC's Hans Rosling

Happy 2011 everyone!

As we celebrate the coming year with hope and optimism for change and progress, let us look at the video clip below to remind us, despite the apparent global convulsion due to the  flawed economic paradigm of neoliberalism, how much the world has progressed across centuries. The presentation by Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker, can serve as inspiration of how much innovation and technological change can push nations from the brink of poverty towards modernity.

The trajectory of growth (and how they sort of "converge") reminds me of the Solow–Swan model (also known as the exogenous growth model and the neoclassical growth model) - a model of a long-run economic growth. The model was developed independently by Robert Solow and T. Swan from the earlier  Harrod-Domar model used to explain an economy's growth rate in terms of the level of saving and productivity of capital.

Debt as Modern Slavery (Part 1 of 3)

Part I – Currency Wars, Chimerican Crisis, and the Debt-based Monetary System

By James Matthew B. Miraflor

Presented to the Southeast Asia Regional Socialism Conference of Partido Lakas ng Masa, together with Transform Asia Gender and Labor Institute, November 27, 2010, College of Social Work and Development (CSWCD), University of the Philippines Diliman

Revised on November 29 and 30, 2010

Warm revolutionary greetings to all of our comrades here. I was tasked to discuss on the debt and the financial crisis. As we know, this is a very difficult topic to talk about, as it is related to the most complicated inventions in human history – banking, monetary system, fiscal policy, and investment practices, among others. No one can pretend that the whole thing is already understood completely, for even its inventors have often been labeled as not knowing what they are doing.

Thus, to make things simpler, it is good to begin with a discussion of the current updates in the global financial and monetary practice. Right now, the United States is conducting what it calls as “quantitative easing” (QE). Simply put, this is simply printing dollars out of nowhere. The Federal Reserve already printed $600 billion to buy securities from the US Treasury. The printing press has now become, to paraphrase Ben Bernanke, the secret weapon of the American economy. This devalues dollar vis-à-vis other currencies, making exports to the US more expensive and favoring domestic producers’ access to US market.

Seen as a form of subtle protectionism and as “revenge” over China’s supposedly “undervalued” currency, it had the effect of depreciating the value of dollar worldwide. For export-oriented economies of the world, this may spell ruination, as it means that American exports will be relatively cheaper. This may have the effect of import-substitution in the United States as cheaper American goods replace goods exported by the manufacturing giants like China and Germany to the US market. In the Philippines, this had the effect of shrinking the relative value of the dollars migrant workers send back home, and compromising Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies which earn in dollars.

During the conference. University of the Philippines Diliman - CSWCD.

But beyond QE’s immediate effects lie a more structural cause. It is this cause, which will later be called as debt-based monetary system, that I will attempt to discuss in this paper. Knowing what the systemic impulse behind the production of money is brings us closer to a good explanation on the current phase of the finance capitalist system the whole world is now in. It also allows us to understand alternatives which we may have to implement as a global community if we are to avert financial disaster and transition to socialist alternatives. 

Surprising results from a statistical analysis on PH education data

Photo by Dean Lozarie of Tinig ng Plaridel (UPD-CMC)

Yesterday, University of the Philippines (UP) students protested against the P1.39 billion budget cut for 2011. That there is an actual budget cut is contested, but we must know that this is not happening in a vacuum. Worldwide, students are protesting budget cuts on education as austerity measure for governments to survive the global economic crisis. Italian students did the same recently.

For this purpose, I am posting with permission from my co-author, Ivan Eugenio, a non-parametric statistical study we made on Philippine education data submitted as a requirement for Statistics 130. It uses data culled and prepared by Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) on education, gathered from Commission on Higher Education, Department of Education, and other government agencies.

The study yielded suprising results. First is that there is no change in ratio of enrollees to graduates, and it remains significantly low by inspection. Second is that government appropriation of funds to secondary and tertiary schools are equal. And third, the laborer-job ratio is still close to ideal. But there are implications on these data, given the socio-economic conditions our education system is in.
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Excerpts from Chalk Dust: A Discourse on the Status of the Philippine Education System

A Non-Parametric Statistical Study by Ivan Eugenio and James Miraflor

In any developing nation, one of the biggest components of the enabling environment for industrial growth and capital expansion is the general educational state of the people. The concept is not alien at all to the civilized world. In fact, most liberal democracies often allocate a huge amount of its budget for the education and training of its citizens.

Pilipinas Kay Ganda and the Culture of Plagiarism: An Acceptable National Instinct?

The photo was taken here. Created by Spanky Hizon.

The headline story today of Inquirer is clear, President Aquino wants the Department of Tourism to get another logo and branding for its promotion project. The criticism over the "Pilipinas Kay Ganda" seems to be too hot for them to handle, after taking flak from solons, including Sen. Miriam Santiago who was not amused.

Frankly, I can't see how WOW Philippines cannot sell. It already did, albeit not as effective as the tourism strategy of our neighbors Indonesia (beach-wise Boracay is so much better than Bali) and Malaysia, which tourism industry are reaping billions. But that is a topic for another day.

And there is another thing, the more fundamental question of whether we should really be promoting tourism industry this much if it is actually found to be ecologically-destructive (even Ecotourism is not immune to this) and damaging and/or demeaning of our indigenous cultures and national identity. This, when we should really be focusing on more sustainable and robust sources of economic development, like industrialization. But again, that is another topic for another day.

But I want to focus on one issue, and it is the claim that Pilipinas Kay Ganda logo is a product of plagiarism. Blogger Spanky Hizon revealed what is to be a lethal monkey-wrench to the DOT's project - by putting it side-by-side with Poland's "Polska" tourism logo and saying that the similarities are simply, too hard to ignore. Someone in the DOT (or whoever they commissioned) must have been a great Google fan.

But is it just a mere slip-up on the part of DOT? I say, that it is more than that. It is, in fact, related to recent controversy hounding the Philippine Supreme Court  and the claims that the Supreme Court, by protecting itself from accusations that it plagiarized a legal text and censoring the UP College of Law who fought against it, may have just legalized plagiarism "without malicious intent".

For that matter, the question then becomes: is the culture of plagiarism really, morally detestable? What are the conditions with which it becomes permissible and even necessary?

MMDA's odd-even scheme, biased against the poor

MMDA's odd-even scheme as implemented only to public utility buses shows MMDA's bias for owners of privately-owned vehicles - bias for the well-off as against the poor who can't afford their own vehicle. Politicians are going for the kill as they pith the transport workers and the commuters. This is very saddening.

Commuters wait for buses during rush hour on Monday after bus operators went on a flash strike to protest a number coding scheme being implemented by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority with a view to reducing traffic congestion. Image Credit: AP (caption and pic lifted here)

If anything, we should be regulating private cars first, with private cars' "road-space-taken" per "person-transported" ratio being way more than that of buses. To prove this, we only need to see that even as the odd-even scheme was applied (setting off a bus strike), traffic was not substantially reduced (see lead paragraph).