A simple observation

By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing, Rome, Italy, 25.07.2013 0930 ICT

One will find more poor people in countries where there is neo-liberalism, where there is neo-liberalism thrives the credit institutions.

The greatest product of neo-liberalism  is poverty. It cut the people off from public services and government leave the people to tend for themselves.

The trend could be easily seen  in the Philippines. Globalization and neoliberalization came, and foofs! Filipinos became poorer than ever.

In exempli claro: Government privatize, de-nationalize, they liberalize Public services and other government owned or operated companies. The corparations who now operate the services or companies would increase the fees or prices, and to gain more profits, would refuse to increase the employees’ salaries. The gap between the actual workers’ buying capacity and family living cost widen continuously eventually making the family poorer and poorer. They are left with only three alternatives 

1. Take another job to augment the buying power. But jobs are scarce and almost impossible to find. 
2. Borrow money. But paying the interst alone is already unthinkable. 
3. Go abroad and try his luck out there. But it still needs much money to go abroad.

Credit isn’t extended to help people get ahead. It’s the means for producing securitizable debt, which means financialization (one of the key features of neoliberalism) needs poor people, poor people cut off from public services and left to fend for themselves.

Banks, specially credit banks prosper under neo-liberal system. The system produce poor people, they ask for credits, the poor becomes poorer, the credit bank gains more profit. It is what the neoliberalists call ‘progress’.

 In Italy, many migrant workers, Filipinos among the foremost, made Compass,  a hitherto obscure bank  into a major lending institution. Migrant workers are doubly affected by the financial crisis in Europe. Aside from trying to survive the onslaught of the crisis here, they have to support their families in home country who in turn are also victims of the same crisis. To do this, they take on at least one more job, live in extreme parsimonious limits, and borrow money from Compass. This lending institution is literally bloating in migrant workers’ blood. It practically lives and prosper on the hard earned money of migrants workers.

So, back to Philippines, the economic progress being boasted by the Philippine administration is no progress at all. For the poor, it is a sterile progress, for workers this progress is a jobless progress. It is hailed by the banks as real progress, of course, because they are the direct beneficiaries of neoliberalism in the country. 

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