A Premise to Last: Call for Economic Reform and Job Creation
A Premise to Last: Call for Economic Reform and Job Creation
February 12, 2026
Did you know that the ₱1.2 trillion spent on “flood control” projects from 2022 to 2025 would have been enough to change the Philippines’ destiny? Instead of short‑term projects, that capital could have built a massive industrial network capable of creating 8.4 million direct and indirect jobs. Imagine: we could have eliminated the 2.2 million jobless Filipinos on record—four times over. Why, then, is ayuda still the default answer? This essay takes that premise and runs it through an academic sieve, a satirical mirror, and an anecdotal microscope, asking rhetorical questions until the answers either blush or confess.
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Contextual Irony
In the academy we are taught to distinguish between capital formation and consumption smoothing, between structural investment and stopgap relief. In the marketplace of public policy, however, these distinctions are often translated into campaign slogans and photo ops. Is it not curious that a nation can marshal ₱1.2 trillion for projects labeled with the noble phrase “flood control” while the machinery of long‑term industrial transformation remains a thought experiment? How many syllables of “infrastructure” must be uttered before someone asks whether the infrastructure is building factories or merely building the optics of governance?
The irony is deliciously academic: a country that could, in theory, convert a single budgetary line into millions of livelihoods instead chooses to parcel out temporary relief. Is this a failure of imagination, or a triumph of political arithmetic? If money is a language, what dialect are our leaders speaking when they prefer cash transfers over capital projects that could seed entire industrial corridors?
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Satirical Diagnosis
Permit a little satire as a diagnostic tool. Imagine a committee convened to allocate ₱1.2 trillion. The committee’s minutes read like a tragicomedy: “Motion to fund flood control projects to protect voters from seasonal inconvenience; seconded by the Department of Electoral Stability.” The budget is approved unanimously, with a ceremonial ribbon cutting scheduled for every barangay. Meanwhile, the proposal to build a network of mega‑factories is tabled indefinitely under the heading “too structural, too permanent, too threatening to the patronage equilibrium.”
Is it satire or is it policy when the state invests in temporality? If a government builds a bridge that lasts two rainy seasons and a memory that lasts four, have we not invented a new form of infrastructure: the ephemeral monument to expediency? What does it say about political incentives when permanence is politically inconvenient?
Satire aside, the diagnosis is straightforward: dependency is a political technology. The Ayuda System is not merely a welfare mechanism; it is a mechanism of political continuity. If voters are kept in a state of intermittent relief, what incentive remains for them to demand structural change? If the next payout is always a heartbeat away, why risk the discomfort of demanding a different economic architecture?
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Anecdotal Interlude
Allow an anecdote. In a provincial town, a sari‑sari store owner named Lolo Ramon once told me, half in jest and half in resignation, that the best harvest he ever had was the week after a mayoral visit. “They give rice, they give cash, they give a promise,” he said, “and for a week the town is full of laughter.” Then he paused and added, “But the laughter is like the sound of a bell that tolls only when the hand that rings it is near.”
Is Lolo Ramon’s laughter a measure of contentment or a symptom of a system that monetizes hope? If a community’s joy can be scheduled, can its dignity be purchased? How many Lolo Ramons must we meet before we realize that the bell tolls for more than a week?
Anecdotes are not data, but they are the human vectors that carry data into the realm of meaning. They reveal how policy is experienced, not merely how it is budgeted. When the lived experience of aid becomes cyclical, predictable, and politically timed, it ceases to be a safety net and becomes a leash.
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Rhetorical Interrogations
Let us now pepper the argument with rhetorical questions, because questions are the scalpel of thought.
- If ₱1.2 trillion could seed an industrial network, why do we accept projects that yield temporary relief rather than permanent livelihoods?
- If politicians benefit from dependency, what structural reforms would make dependency politically unattractive?
- If dignity is the currency of a stable society, why do we trade it for the small change of periodic payouts?
- If industrialization creates permanent jobs, what prevents a state from prioritizing it over ephemeral projects?
- If voters are rational actors, why do they accept short‑term aid that undermines long‑term prosperity?
These questions are not rhetorical ornamentation alone; they are probes into incentive structures. They ask us to consider the political economy of choice: who benefits from temporality, and who pays the cost of deferred futures?
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Policy Imagination
Now for the academic part that refuses to be merely critical: what would an alternative look like? Suppose the ₱1.2 trillion had been allocated to a National Industrialization Initiative—a constellation of mega‑factories, supplier clusters, vocational training hubs, and logistics corridors. What would be the plausible outcomes?
- Employment Multipliers: A well‑designed industrial network could generate millions of direct and indirect jobs, from factory floor workers to logistics managers, from machine technicians to parts suppliers.
- Skill Formation: Permanent industries demand permanent skills. Vocational programs aligned with factory needs would create a workforce whose value appreciates over time.
- Regional Development: Factories located outside the capital would stimulate local economies, reduce urban migration, and distribute growth more equitably.
- Fiscal Sustainability: Long‑term employment expands the tax base, reducing the need for cyclical cash transfers and enabling more sustainable public finance.
Is this a utopian blueprint or a pragmatic roadmap? The answer depends on political will. If the state can be persuaded to value permanence over patronage, the transformation is feasible. If not, the blueprint remains a beautiful thought experiment.
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Esoteric Humor and the Public Sphere
Permit a touch of esotericism: imagine an economist who speaks only in metaphors and a politician who speaks only in payouts. The economist draws diagrams of supply chains that look like constellations; the politician draws maps of constituencies that look like patchwork quilts. Which map will guide the nation to prosperity?
Humor here is not frivolous. It is a cognitive lubricant that allows us to slide between the abstract and the concrete. When we laugh at the absurdity of a policy that funds temporality, we also recognize the absurdity—and thus the possibility—of change. Can humor be a civic tool? If laughter can puncture complacency, then perhaps satire is a form of civic hygiene.
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Moral Claim and Civic Prescription
The moral claim is simple and unapologetic: dignity trumps dependency. Aid that preserves dignity is different from aid that perpetuates dependency. The former is a bridge to autonomy; the latter is a tether to political cycles. If we accept that dignity is a public good, then the state’s role is to create conditions for dignified work, not to institutionalize waiting.
What, then, should citizens demand? First, transparency in budgeting that distinguishes between temporary relief and structural investment. Second, accountability mechanisms that tie public spending to long‑term outcomes, not short‑term optics. Third, leadership that understands industrial economics and is willing to prioritize permanence over patronage.
Is this asking too much? Perhaps. But is it asking more than the nation deserves? Certainly not.
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Conclusion
The ₱1.2 trillion question is not merely arithmetic; it is moral arithmetic. It asks us to weigh the present against the future, the immediate comfort against the enduring dignity of work. If the capital that flowed into “flood control” projects could have seeded an industrial revolution of sorts, then the choice to spend it otherwise is not merely a budgetary decision—it is a decision about the kind of polity we wish to be.
So we return to the rhetorical posture with which we began: Dignity, not dependency. Jobs, not just aid. Who will we elect to steward that choice? Who will we hold accountable when budgets are written? If the Ayuda System is a machine that manufactures dependence, can we not design a different machine—one that manufactures opportunity?
The answers will not arrive as a single payout. They will arrive as policy, as institutions, and as the slow, stubborn work of building things that last. If we are serious about changing destiny, we must stop treating our future as petty cash. If we are serious about dignity, we must demand leaders who build, not just hand out. If we are serious about jobs, we must insist on permanence.
And if, after all this, someone asks whether a nation can be remade by a single budgetary choice, we should answer with another question: If not now, when?
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ curatorial writing practice exemplifies this path: transforming grief into infrastructure, evidence into agency, and memory into resistance. As the Philippines enters a new economic decade, such work is not peripheral—it is foundational.
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A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
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