By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
NOTE: We suggest you first read “Empathy, not poverty, is a choice” (https://opinion.inquirer.net/128892/empathy-not-poverty-is-a-choice).
Mariam Jayne Agonos torpedoed her own position that poverty is not a choice (“Empathy, not poverty, is a choice,” Opinion, April 15, 2020), when she, citing a source, wrote that behavior is among the cultural assets needed for progress in the social ladder. I say that because I am sure that even she will agree that conditions in the country allow people to freely choose how they behave and that people could develop a pattern of behavior which could either foil or boost their social mobility.
She also naively argued that if poverty were a choice, how would one account for the poverty of the people in the informal sector who work hard and long and therefore could not be rightly branded as lazy. For her information, industry is just one of the requirements for attainment of a better life. Unwise usage of the money earned can cancel out the hard work. It is here where more Filipinos than we care to think fail and in effect, decide to remain poor despite their commendable capacity for work. We see farm workers break their backs in the fields only to buy liquor and cigarettes with their wages leaving only a few pesos to take home to their families. We hear of OFWs who live like millionaires during pay days, who go to casinos and spend on luxuries.
I ask Agonos if young Filipinos have no choice but indulge their natural inclination to sloth, procrastination, living beyond one’s means, pleasure-seeking among other weaknesses such that before they know it, these have become fixed behavior they cannot kick anymore.
How could poverty not be a choice among college students who blow up their own future and dash the hopes of their families for a better life to pieces through a precipitate marriage or appetite for good times with the barkada or by simply taking their studies for granted?
How could poverty not be a choice when despite the fact that the family’s resources are already strained to the uttermost with the current number of mouths to feed, a couple still add to their brood? With all the information now available and the free family planning services given by the government, the message to limit the number of a couple’s children to what they are capable of supporting and sending to school is pervasive and the means to attain the goal accessible to all those interested. And yet, it is a very glaring reality in this country that those who have the least capacity to provide for children have the most children. I am sure that Agonos would accede that common sense, foresight and self-control are mandatory behavior asked of those who want to improve their economic lot.
The preceding are just a few among instances of how Filipinos choose to be poor through a single blunder or series of missteps or the cultivation of a detrimental behavior. These situations are so widespread and ordinary only the blind and blinded do not see them which explains the lack of empathy for the poor Agonos laments about.
Agonos made it sound that the contention that the poor brought their situation upon themselves is not solidly founded when she wrote “They gave stories of rags-to-riches—theirs or of prominent people—as proof.” For her information, per data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, the poverty incidence in the country was reduced by 6.6 percent between the first semester of 2015 to the first semester of 2018 ( from 27.6 percent to 21 percent). Reckoning from the 75 percent poverty incidence in 1961, that would mean a reduction of 54 percent from the ranks of the country’s poor from 1961 to 2018.
The statistics prove that to the credit of Filipinos, very few seriously take the view of Agonos and her ilk that the economic standing of people in this country is mainly determined by external factors they have no control over and implying that in order for everyone to have a better life, Philippine society must first be reconfigured and be rid of the elements which perpetuate the poverty of the many so that finally there would be enough opportunities to go around. The data shows that most Filipinos just go right ahead to challenge poverty with many of them eventually crossing the poverty line.
That Agonos attributes the better economic situation of the Filipinos who say poverty is a choice to being “lucky to have access to various opportunities” shows how detached from reality she is. How for one could anyone in his right mind link a milestone which involves years of endless toil, single-minded resolve, sacrifices and spartan lifestyle with luck? How could Agonos take away from working students the sweetness of the result of their epic struggle for a college degree by saying this would not have been possible without the element of luck? In the case of the millions of OFWs some of whom most likely were among those who made the social media topic “Poverty is a choice” hot, they created their own opportunities when they decided to leave their families to take their chances in foreign lands some of them borrowing from the loan sharks for the job placement fee. Where is the luck and free ride there? **
