HI166 - J

Molen, Ryan Gabriel C.

Other Work #7
Where Numbers Stand Strong and Where They Fall Short

I mentioned in Other Work 6 that I am active on social media (sometimes a bit too active.) I
have seen people on the Internet engaged in fiery discussions and mudslinging especially when an
alarming issue about our government’s actions and policies crops up (which sadly, is almost every day).
Whenever Duterte acts as if he took a trick from Ferdinand Marcos’s playbook or when he threatens
violence and Martial Law on those who oppose him, people are quick to discuss the merits and demerits
of Martial Law. Some go: Marcos pa rin, mga [expletive]! The Martial Law years were the golden years
of our country! We were all rich! We should go back to that! The peso dollar exchange rate then was
2:1! Martial Law was the best! Kung ayaw n’yo ng Martial Law noon, ‘wag niyong gamitin ang… pick
whatever infrastructure that Marcos built. The quick rebuttal to that nostalgia is presenting the resources
that assert NO, the Martial Law era was not the golden era. The state of our economy was terrible
during that period, and many agree on that general insight.

James K. Boyce’s book “The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos
Era” is a possible resource to rebut the claims of those people that the Martial Law years were the prime
years of our country. The provided excerpt consists of three chapters. In this paper, I will trace the main
arguments of the book as they were substantiated in three chapters. I will present how the book excerpts
assert three primary arguments. After this, I will comment on its strengths and weaknesses, and finally
articulate key points from the reading.

The provided excerpts contain Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 11. On the first chapter,
Boyce cleanly sets the scope and structure of his agenda. He provides an easy, accessible outline of
the whole book. He categorically states the first of his main assertions: that President Ferdinand Marcos
“…left behind an economy in shambles1.” He then establishes the three main features of Marcos’s
economic development strategy: the green revolution, then the reliance on export agriculture, and finally
the large-scale loans from foreign banks. Of these three strategies, (2) was tackled by Chapter 2 and
(3) was discussed by Chapter 11. Just like the three pillars of Marcos’s (faulty) economic development
strategies, I consider Boyce’s argument to have three pillars as well. They are listed below:

1. After Martial Law, Ferdinand Marcos had left the Philippine

economy in shambles.
2. While growth was observed in some metrics, the Philippines
during the Martial Law era experienced what was called
immiserizing growth.
3. Growth and impoverishment went hand-in-hand.2

The first argument is the main argument, from which the second and third add layers of
complexity and complication to it.

To move to the second main argument, immiserizing growth is “a situation in which the poor
become poorer even as income per person grows, but also in a stronger, causal sense that growth itself
is a cause of impoverishment.3” This assertion is a response to the misguided claim that the poverty
experienced during the Martial Law era is mere fiction because according to typically acknowledged
metrics of growth, the economy grew at that time. Boyce highlights that large growth and accumulation
of resources may have been possible, but the distribution of those resources were less than equitable.
Much earnings go to those already rich. Meanwhile, the poor obtain less and plunge deeper into material
poverty. Thus, Boyce moves onto his third main assertion that prevents his answer from being a simple,
reductionist answer: yes, the country had grown in some economic aspects, but the other numbers,
trends, and observations say the otherwise. So, growth and impoverishment stood side by side during
those times, and perhaps the difference is how to interpret the numbers.

1
James K. Boyce. The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press, 1993). 1-53
2
Ibid. p. 4
3
Ibid, p. 4
 The second chapter attempted to flesh out his second main assertion on immiserizing growth.
To concretize this immiserizing growth, Boyce characterizes it further by calling it strong polarization,
or “the slice of the rich [in the economic pie] grow, while those of the poor shrink4.” To fortify his argument,
he cites (1) the rising GNP and its sharp drop in 19835; (2) the decreased income of both agricultural
and urban wages, and the associated “staggering decline”6 of the purchasing power of the workers; (3)
substantial unemployment 7; (4) underestimation of income and expenditure among the rich and the
poor and (5) issues on the definition of the poverty line.

The point that strongly supports immiserizing growth is Boyce’s discussion of Table 2.10, the
income shares of upper and lower [class] quintiles—a discussion that falls under situation (4):

“Taking the data in Table 2.10 at face value, they indicate that
inequality widened until the early 1980s, at which time the richest
quintile received nearly 59 per cent of total income, while the
poorest quintile received only 3 percent. The trend towards
greater inequality appears to have been reversed in 1985, when
the estimated income share of the poorest quintile rose to an
all-time high of 5.7 percent, while that of the top quintile
dropped to an all-time low of 50.3 percent. Whereas the ISH
surveys of 1980-1983 found that the family incomes of the richest
quintile were twenty times as high as those of the poorest quintile,
the 1985 FIES found they were only nine times as high.
(emphasis mine)8

In here, it is quite clear that the gulf between the rich and the poor was large in the early eighties,
and it had lessened in 1985. However, this is still a huge divide nonetheless! It shows that even if the
GNP may have risen, there is still a large gap between the two, and it cannot be said that the rich and
the poor equally reap the benefits of the perceived economic growth because of trends (2), (3), and (5)
which come as a detriment to the poor. Poverty also is difficult to imagine if it is viewed only in terms of
the poverty line. Boyce describes how there have been arguments that the number of “poor families”
had been decreasing, but it may be involved with an unreasonable (at beast), or completely out-of-
touch (at worst) definition of what poverty is. It is frustrating that a similar discussion on the poverty line
is still being fought today, and how some government officials believe P10,000 monthly is enough to
provide the needs of a five-person family.

What shines in Boyce’s discussion is he acknowledges the limitations of the statistics and the
numbers he brings forth. He mentions the biases, the inaccuracies, the skepticism on the data, and the
gaps in knowledge; he is aware when figures and tables “should only be regarded as only rough
approximations.”9 He is unafraid to dive into the complications and the nuances in the metrics—saying
in page 30, for example, that the measurement of unemployment is quite unreliable and complicated
because of the “changes in the official definition of employment over the years.” 10 He also comments
on these tactics that these may be ways to cheat the numbers attempt to mask just how terrible the
unemployment situation is. This part is key because it would be dangerous for Boyce to offer all these
tables without comment or without complaint that it may be used for insidious reasons.

The other chapter, Chapter 11, moves away from the onslaught of statistics and tables to a
structured discussion of foreign loans and how this wreaked havoc on the country’s economy. The logic
of the chapter’s argument is this: first, foreign loans are valid strategies to stimulate and sustain a
country’s growth, but this is acceptable only when the short-term benefits outweigh the long-term
liabilities. However, excessive borrowing had altered the value of our peso and thus affected our
country’s behavior towards imports and exports. All the borrowing had been unscrupulous, as the

4
Boyce, The Political Economy… p. 13
5
Ibid., p. 14
6
Ibid., p. 27
7
Ibid., p. 29
8
Ibid., p.39
9
Ibid., p. 30
10
Ibid., p 30
government funneled the funds into initiatives and projects that were either underutilized, unutilized (the
completely untouched Bataan Nuclear Power Plant11), or at worst, even non-existent (the example of
the mill12). However, a crucial point from Boyce is that the foreign banks and investors were complicit
to this. I agree that it is very suspicious how the economic climate in the Philippines is quite bleak (as
seen in Chapter 2) yet the foreign banks gleefully indulged in the government’s dubious projects that
sometimes never saw the light of day. Many things do not add up.

And so instead of boosting our economy, the excessive, crooked spending put us in deeper
misery. It is now everyone’s problem how to pay the $27 billion-dollar debt—a debt incurred for projects
that had no benefit to our country; or, if ever there was, the benefit was so miniscule versus the money
and resources used to fund it.

Even just by reading excerpts, I can appreciate the general argument of the book, which relies
on the three main assertions I have listed above. Aside from the clear writing, his sense of structure in
the discussion is strong. In chapter two, he often follows a pattern of (1) making an assertion, (2)
discussing the data of that assertion (3) reiterating his assertion and (4) discussing the nuances and
fine parts of what these numbers mean. This sets him apart from simply going to the library or a resource
to obtain all the information for yourself. This sort of discussion also aids in sifting through the seemingly
contradictory and inconsistent assertions of the patterns if they are taken face value. Boyce leaves no
stone unturned—he patiently discusses each table in Chapter 2, and he outlines the different scenarios
and sub-scenarios in Chapter 11. I do not have a background in development studies nor in economics,
yet I was satisfied with the explanation and I found it was logical. Perhaps people with backgrounds in
those fields would be able to spot the finer inconsistencies I cannot detect easily.

Meanwhile, I believe the presentation of Boyce’s data could have been improved, especially in
the second chapter heavy with tables and information. Boyce presents many tables to draw assert that
the Philippines did not enjoy large economic improvements during Martial Law. Boyce typically
discusses the dips and inconsistencies in the pattern of the tables. Due to this, turning the tables into
graphs would facilitate the reader’s understanding of the data. Readers may gloss over the numbers
on the table, but it would take only a second to spot the pattern (or breaking thereof) if it were a graph.
Another weakness I have observed, especially in the second chapter, that Boyce sometimes mentions
a statistic that sounds ridiculous, but offers it with no comment. An example of this the block quote
above. The implication is quite surprising, and if read closely, it seems that it was already a huge
improvement and a welcome relief that the rich were now only 9 times richer than the poor! But Mr.
Boyce, I thought to myself, that’s still 9 times, and it was 20 times before! He could have been more
aggressive in grappling with points like these.

So far, we have observed how Boyce’s argument is strong in its sense of patient, explicit, careful,
and structured discussion to support his three main arguments. Beyond this, I would like to propose
three more insights from his discussion that are not as explicitly and categorically stated as his claims.

First, it is apparent that models, methodologies, and metrics to measure people’s lives are not
neutral. They can work to further an agenda. “Averages are deceptive,” Boyce often says. These metrics
are pliable. Just like how historians are to narratives, economists can dictate which numbers and
measurements matter. Thus, we must be aware of the thought process and the intent behind models,
metrics, or statistical trends. We saw this in the example above on unemployment and the poverty line.
These concepts are merely constructed by human beings. They can be adjusted at will to portray a
version of society so far from reality.

Second, numbers might be more robust than stories that can shift across many recollections
and memories, but they too have limits. As discussed above, Boyce admits this many times. There are
gaps in the data. The data collection method is shaky. The data obtained is hard to believe. From this,
we see where numbers fall short: it is difficult to measure some aspects of people’s lives.
Underemployment is hard to comprehensively qualified and quantified. It is challenging, if downright
impossible to determine just how much money is needed per month so a family can support itself and
live a decent life.

11
Boyce, The Political Economy..., p. 321
12
Ibid., p. 321
 If we return to the anecdote earlier on the Martial Law advocate, we arrive at the third point,
which may also be a critique of Boyce’s work: that sometimes, numbers alone cannot convince people
out of their entrenched beliefs. I, for myself, read through the discussion and thought they depicted
impoverishment as something so clinical. It felt so cold; as if I was in the laboratory studying numbers
and figures on how poor people are. It made me feel nothing for them. How can one feel the gravity of
an X% decrease in salary just by looking tables and charts? Perhaps this is why people are not
convinced if they are given walls of numbers—perhaps what we need are stories from the Martial Law
era itself to impress upon people that those times were terrible times. Don’t give only the statistics of
hungry people. Tell people how difficult it is to spend a day with no food on the table and going to bed
starving. And perhaps people will listen. However, I cannot hold this against Boyce since it is evident
that the book’s project focuses on analysis rather than quality storytelling.

All in all, Boyce’s book serves as a comprehensive resource to defend the position that the
Martial Law years were not the golden years of our country. Boyce manages to wrestle with the data
and the analysis to present a coherent, structured assertion that the Martial Law years were definitely
not our economic glory days. If I were a Martial Law advocate and someone sent this and other numbers
to me—I would shut up and log out. I would not know why people continue to assert the claimed glory
days when the numbers, as far as they can stand strong, firmly say no.

Maybe because PDFs and articles like these can’t be loaded by free Facebook data. They
should get around to fixing that.

Work Cited
Boyce, James K. “The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era.” (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1993). 1-57