Weekly Brief
Revisit what the "P" in GDP stands for and disturbing insight into the extent of the profound impoverishment of the Philippine economy will emerge.
In review and in prospect
So there was an official announcement that the Philippine economy “grew” by an annualised 7.2% this year, reportedly “its strongest economic growth in more than 40 years”. And then Opposition “economists” jumped on the news to downplay it saying something to the effect of, but of course considering it is measured against the low bar of COVID lockdown economic decline.
Sure. So now the “debate” on the Philippine economy surrounds that one snippet of news and the flypaper buzzing of millennial UP School of Economics “economics” grads. What insights were gained this week from the buzzing of the nation’s foremost “thought leaders” around that number? Not much beyond that quibbling over a mere abstraction.
The fact is, the economy can expand or contract by percentages ranging between plus or minus 10 percent on any given year and none of that “data” will make Filipinos any more cluey about how exactly to make use of the professor’s information on the matter. The “basket of goods and services” that is used to calculate these numbers shifts every year and there really is no true apples-to-apples comparison between one GDP number and another year-on-year that would satisfy real mathematicians outside of the field of “economics”.
Indeed, to outsiders, the Philippine economy is really a simple basket. The Financial Times in their above report summed it up handily. The Philippines, they report, “relies largely on remittances from overseas workers and business outsourcing activities such as call centres, alongside farming and fishing”. GDP being some sort of aggregate measure of “economic activity” would count money sloshing around the economy even if said sloshing does not really result in any tangible conversion of material raw input (energy and minerals) into marketable stuff.
Recall the “P” in GDP and ask a real scientist what an economy with real product is and he will tell you that it is one that produces stuff. The question on how much stuff the Philippine economy produces should therefore be the core of a more constructive debate of what really needs to be done to make the Philippines a truly economically viable country. It is not about how “fairly” that GDP (or its change over 12 months) is distributed. It’s about what constitutes it and what needs to change in the way Filipinos as a people regard productive work to make it a true measure of domestic product.
Last week’s blog posts
How Gnosticism explains some of today’s Problems
January 26, 2023 by ChinoF
"What I personally dislike with Gnosticism is that it gives rise to Anti-Individualism. Since the material world is evil, the reality of humans having individual wills, different tastes, different ideas and different opinions, is evil."
This year’s EDSA “Revolution” commemoration is gonna be an awkward one
January 25, 2023 by benign0
"In short, the rise of Bongbong Marcos alone did not doom the Yellowtard-Communist Axis. The previous two national elections long before had already delivered the writing on the wall for them."