On Being Poor and Villar

Determining who is poor is subjective if objective tools like poverty threshold are not used. Some governments even came up with unrealistic poverty thresholds just to sugarcoat the statistics of the percentage of the population who are poor (understating poverty). I remember reading an article about a local celebrity who was asked about his notion of poverty or being poor. He recalled that he felt poor when he needed to jumpstart his car by pushing it during his teenage years. This celebrity has this notion of poverty in a country where most people don’t own cars and majority of those who have probably bought their cars through car loans from their employers or banks.  He may be even too young to drive a car during those times and what’s more, to own one. 

What is alarming in Villar’s pronouncements that he is poor is not that he is lying because as I said the notion of poverty is subjective. What is alarming is that he treats his roots/beginnings (which is seen by most as middle class) as poor. In a newly industrialized country where 44% of the population subsists on 2 USD or less a day and 32.9% are below the official poverty threshold, a middle class existence is enviable. It has been reported that Villar’s family was a double income household – his US educated father earned around 35000 PhP (in today’s money) a month for being a government employee and his mother had a stall in a market. Moreover, Villar’s younger years happened in an era when there were no cellphones, cable TVs, game consoles - i.e. life’s materialistic pleasures then were simpler and less expensive than what we have today. Life’s materialistic  pleasures probably did not eat much of his family’s income.  I believe that more than half of this country’s population (both then and now) would dream/like to have the financial situation of Villar during his younger years. Supporters and Villar himself will probably argue that Villar has many siblings and that the value of his family income was decreased due to this. However, it was still common to have large families during those times and most of these families earned less than what his family earned.

So what’s the problem if Villar sees his middle class existence then as poor (that his assertion of being poor is not only a campaign strategy but his actual view)? Well, it means that he has a lot of work to do when he gets elected as president. Remember that his campaign promise is to eradicate/end poverty. With his definition of being poor as earning below 35000 PhP a month (ignoring the earning of her stall owner mother since this earning is not easily quantifiable and was not documented), he needs to alleviate more than half of the population from poverty. This is surely a great feat and will land him in world history books. 

Aside: I think that most of my friends who are professionals earn less than 35000 PhP a month.