"We give her back to You, with grateful but breaking hearts" By Catalino Arevalo, SJ IF I may, I will first

ask pardon for what might be an unseemly introduction. In the last days of President Cory's illness, when it seemed inevitable that the end would come, the assignment to give this homily was given to me by Kris Aquino. She reminded me that many times and publicly, her mother had said she was asking me to preach at her funeral Mass. Always I told her I was years older, and would go ahead of her, but she would just smile at this. Those who knew Tita Cory knew that when she had made up her mind, she had made up her mind. What then is my task this morning? I know for certain that if liturgical rules were not what they are, she would have asked Congressman Ted Locsin to be here in my place. No one has it in him to speak as fittingly of Cory Aquino in the manner and measure of tribute she uniquely deserves, no one else as he. Asked in an interview, she said that the address before the two Houses of Congress at Washington she considered perhaps the supreme shining moment of her life. We know who helped her with those words with which she conquered America. These last few days, too, every gifted writer in the press and other media has written on her person and political history, analyzed almost every side of her life and achievement as our own "icon of democracy". More powerfully even, images of her and of Edsa Uno have filled hour after hour of TV time. Really, what else is left to be said? SO, Tita Cory, you'll forgive me if I don't even try to give a shadow of the great oration that should be given here this morning. Let me instead try to say some things the people who persevered for hours on end in the serried lines at Ortigas or here in Intramuros can (I hope) more easily follow. This is a lowly tribute at one with "the old sneakers and clothes made tighter by age, soaked by water and much worse for wear" of the men, women and children who braved the rain and the sun because they wanted to tell you, even for a brief and hurried moment, how much they love you. You truly "now belong among the immortals". But these words are for those mortals who with bruised hearts have lost "the mother of a people". Maybe less elegantly than the seminarian said to me Monday, they would like to say also: "She was the only true queen our people have ever had, and she was queen because we knew she truly held our hearts in the greatness and the gentleness of her own." One of my teachers used to tell us that if we really wanted to know and understand a position held, we would have to learn it from someone fully committed to it. Just as only one who genuinely loves a person, really knows him or her also. So to begin with, I turned to three real "experts on Cory"; to ask them where for them the true greatness of Cory Aquino lay. My first source thought it was in her selflessness, seen above all in her love of country-surely above self; yes, even above family. Her self-giving, then, for us; what she had received, all became gift for us. The second, thought it was in her faith her greatness lay, in her total trust in God which was also her greatest strength. And the third said it was in her courage and the unshakable loyalty that went with it. It was a strength others could lean on; it never wavered; it never broke....Cory's selflessness and selfgiving; her faith (the Holy Father just called it "unwavering"); her courage, her strength. May I use this short list to frame what I will say? O, let me name my experts now, if I may. They were three, all of them women close to her: Maria Elena Aquino Cruz, whom we know as Ballsy, Maria Aurora Aquino Abellada, Pinky to her friends; and Victoria Elisa Aquino Dee, Viel to the family. Kris and Noynoy are the public figures; they can speak for themselves. I hope they will forgive me that I did not ask. First, selflessness First, then, her generous selflessness. For us this morning what is surely most to the point is her love of country. When her final illness was upon her already, she said-most recently at the Greenmeadows chapel (her last public words, I think)-that she was offering her suffering, first to God, then for our people. I heard that grandson Jiggy asked her why first for country and people, and she said that always the priority line-up was God, our country and our people, and then family. On radio, the other night, the commentator asked an old woman in line why she stood hours in the rain to get into La Salle. "Ito lang ang maibibigay ko po sa kanya, bilang pasasalamat." "Bakit, ano ba ang ibinigay ni Cory sa inyo?" "Di po ba ang buhay nya? Ang buong sarili nya? At di po ba ang pag-asa? Kaya mahal na mahal po namin siya." Early on, on TV, they ran many times the clip from a last interview. She says, "I thank God, and then all of you, for making me a Filipino, for making me one of you. I cherish this as one of the truly great gifts I have received." A few weeks from her death, she could say that; without put-on or the least insincerity. "I thank you, for making me one of you." Her selflessness, her self-gift. Pope Benedict likes to say that the God whom Jesus Christ revealed to us, is Father. A Father who is wholly selfgift; the God "whose nature is to give Himself"-to give Himself to us, in His Son. And, the Pope says, that is what is the meaning of Jesus and the life of Jesus, and, by discipleship, what the Christian's life is meant to be. We Christians, too, we must give ourselves away in the self-giving of love. "Ang buhay po nya at sarili. Kaya po mahal na mahal namin sya." In the last days, when finally and reluctantly still she admitted she had much pain, I kept thinking that only a couple of weeks before, for the first time publicly, she said that she was offering it up first of all for us. Second, her faith Second, her faith. Pinky says, it was her mother's greatest strength; it was what was deepest in her. Her faith was her bedrock, and it was, bedrock. Frederick Buechner the ordained minister and novelist likes to say that through his lifetime, he's had many doubts, even deep doubt, daily doubts. "But I have never really looked down into the deep abyss and seen only nothing. Somehow I have known, that underneath all the shadows and the darkness, there are the everlasting arms." I think Cory's faith was like that, not in the multiplicity of doubts (even if, in a life so filled with trial, there surely were doubts too), but in the certainty of the everlasting arms. More than once she told me, "Every time life painted me into a corner, with seemingly no escape, I always turned to Him in trust. I knew He would never abandon us if we trusted in Him. And you know, somehow, He found a way out for us." And so Pinky says, "Mom was always calm even in the most trying times. She trusted God would always be there for us, She was our source of strength. She made this world seem so much safer and less cruel for us. And now that our source of strength is

gone, we have to make our faith something more like hers. But we know in our hearts that in every storm she will watch over us from heaven." Devotion to Mary Within this faith was her devotion to Mary, the place Our Lady of Fatima and the rosary held in her life. All we can say on this, this morning is that Our Lady truly had a special, living presence in her life: Mary was, for Cory, true mother and incomparable friend; as we say in the hymn-vita, dulcedo et spes: life, sweetness and hope. No, Mary was not the center of her faith, but its air, its atmosphere; and the rosary, her lifeline through every trial and crisis. In the long harsh months of her illness, Sister Lucia's beads almost never left her hands. She was holding them, as last Saturday was dawning and her years of exile were at last done, when we know her Lady "showed unto her, the blessed fruit of her womb." Third, courage Lastly, her courage, her strength. Her children tell us that their father was only able to do what he wanted to do, because her loyalty and her support for his purposes was total, so she practically raised them up as a single parent. Ninoy himself wrote, again and again, that he endured imprisonment and persecution, leaning so much on her courage and love. And after his death, when she could have withdrawn in a way "safely" to her own life with her children at last, she stayed on her feet and fought on in the years that followed, through the snap elections and what went before and after them, through her presidency and the seven coup attempts which tried to bring her down. Even after she had given up her rule, could she not have said "enough", and we would all have understood? But with not the least desire for position or power again, whenever she thought the spaces of freedom and the true good of our land were threatened, she went back to the streets of struggle again. Once again she led us out of the apathy we so readily fall into; once again she called us out of our comfort zones to the roads of sacrifice. Purity of heart Here, even hesitantly, may I add one trait, one virtue, to those her daughters have named? One day Cardinal Stephen Kim of South Korea asked if he might visit her. Through Ballsy, she said yes. It was a day Malacaang was "closed"; they were making up the roster of members of the forthcoming Constitutional Convention. Someone from the palace staff ordered us turned away when we came; it was Ballsy who rescued us. Stephen Kim, hero and saint to his own people-perhaps, along with Cardinal Sin, one the two greatest Asian Catholic prelates of our time-spent some 45 minutes talking with her. When we were on our way back, he said, "I know why the Lord has entrusted her with power, at this most difficult time...It is because she is pure of heart. She has no desire for power; even now it is with reluctance she takes it on. And she has done this only because she wants to do whatever she can for your people." He said, "She truly moves me by the purity of her spirit. God has given a great gift to your people." With this purity of heart, in the scheme of the Christian Gospel, there is joined another reality which really, only the saints understand. It is suffering. How often (it is really often; over and over through the years) she spoke of suffering as part of her life. Much contemporary spirituality speaks of suffering almost as the epitome of all evil. But in fact for all the saints, it is a mystery they themselves do not really understand nor really explain, Yet they accept it quietly, simply as part of their lives in Christ. There is only one painting she ever gave me. Kris said then, when her mom gave it to me, that it was her mom's favorite. The painting carries 1998 as its date; Cory named it "Crosses and roses." There are seven crosses for the seven months and seven weeks of her beloved Ninoy's imprisonment, and for the seven attempted coups during her presidency, and many roses, multicolored roses all around them. At the back of the painting, in her own hand, she wrote a haiku of her own: "Crosses and roses/ make my life more meaningful./ I cannot complain." Often she spoke of her "quota of suffering." When she spoke of her last illness, she said: "I thought I had filled up my quota of suffering, but it seems there is no quota. I look at Jesus, who was wholly sinless: how much suffering he had to bear for our sake." And in her last public talk (it was at Greenmeadows chapel), the first time she spoke of her own pain: "I have not asked for it, but if it is meant to be part of my life still, so be it. I will not complain." "I try to join it with Jesus's pain and offering. For what it's worth, I am offering it up for our people." Friends here present, I tell you honestly I hesitated before going into this, this morning. But without it, part of the real Cory Aquino would be kept from view. Quite simply, this was integral to the love she bore for her people. Thanks to her children AT this point, may I, following the lead Mr. Rapa Lopa has given, just speak a word of thanks to President Cory's children, who shared so much of her service and her sacrifice. They have almost never had their father and mother for themselves. For so many years, they have been asked to share Ninoy and Cory with all of us. And because of the blood and the spirit their parents have passed on to them, they too gave with generosity and grace the sacrifices we demanded of them. Ballsy and Pinky, Viel and Kris, your husbands and your children, and Senator Noynoy, may we thank you this morning from all our hearts, and may we offer also the gratitude of the hearts of a people now forever in your debt. I have used up all my time, some of you will say, and I have not even approached the essential: her political life, that she was our nation's unique icon of democracy, that Cory Aquino who is know throughout the world; was TIME magazine's 1986's woman of the year; she who led the ending of the dictatorship that had ruined our nation, the bearer of liberation, of freedom, and of hope for a prostrate people. So, by your leave, may I add one item, along this line at last. In October 1995, Milano's Catholic University, conferred on her the doctorate honoris causa in the political sciences (incidentally, only her twenty-third honorary degree). This was only the fifth time this particular one had been given since the university's inception: the first time to an Asian, the first ever to a woman. She wanted, at the end of her lectio magistralis, to spell out, perhaps for the first time with some explicitness and completeness, her personal political creed. She listed seven basic beliefs which, regarding political life , she said she tried to live by. Then she spoke of one more, "one more I may not omit." Perhaps the paragraph which followed is worth citing here, even without comment, because it has something to say to our present hour. (We cite her words now.) "I believe that the vocation of politics must be accepted by those who take up the service of leadership as a vocation in its noblest meaning: it demands all of life. For the life of one who would lead his or her people-in our time as never before-such a life must strive for coherence with the vision aspired to, or else that vision itself and its realization are already betrayed. That vision must itself be present, in some

authentic way, in those who seek to realize it: present, in the witness of their example; present, in a purity of heart vis--vis the exercise and usages of power; present, in an ultimate fidelity to principle, in a dedication that is ready to count the cost in terms of 'nothing less than everything.' It is Cardinal Newman, I believe, who said that in this world, we do good only in the measure that we pay for it in the currency of our own lives. For us Christians, there is always the image of Jesus, and the price his service demanded of him. And for me there has been, as a constant reminder, the sacrifice my husband offered, and the word that it has spoken, to me and my people." (Cory Aquino, end of citation) Conclusion With all this said, I am done. Ma'am, tapos na po ang assignment ko. It has been so hard to do what you asked. But I comfort myself that these so many words really do not matter. What counts in the end is really-what all this week has been; these past few days' outpouring of our people's gratitude and love; what will come after all this today; what we will do, in the times ahead, in fidelity to your gift. I received a text last night from a man of some age and with some history behind him. "She made me proud again, to be Filipino." Maybe that says it all. Cardinal Sin used to put it somewhat differently. "What a gift God has given our people, in giving Cory Aquino to us." The nobility and courage of your spirit, the generosity of your heart, the grace and graciousness that accompanied you always. They called it "Cory magic"-but it was the truth, and the purity and beauty, clear and radiant within you, that we saw. And the hope that arose from that. And when the crosses came to you and you did not refuse to bear them, more to be one with your Christ and one with your people and their pain. "Blessed are the pure of heart; for they shall see God." Thank You Father in heaven, for your gift to us of Cory Aquino. Thank You that she passed once this way through our lives with the grace You gave her to share with us. If we give her back to you, we do it with hearts of thanksgiving, but now, oh, with breaking hearts also, because of the greatness and beauty of the gift which she was for us, the likes of which, perhaps, we shall not know again. Salamat po, Tita Cory, mahal na mahal po namin kayo. Homily at the Funeral Mass for former President Cory Aquino Manila Cathedral, August 5, 2009

The Street Strategist has arrived at the conclusion that the poor Filipinos are not rich because they do not have money. This is a very simple concept but it takes a genius to appreciate its simplicity. You may notice that I am trying to explain why Filipinos are not rich in contrast to why Filipinos are poor. Is there a difference? Yes, there is. In asking Why Filipinos are not rich, the implication is that the normal state of events should be that Filipinos are rich and we have to explain if ever they are not in the normal state, that is, we have to explain why Filipinos are not rich when supposedly they should be rich. Diminishing circle Anyway, let us proceed. The Street Strategist has arrived at the conclusion that the poor Filipinos are not rich because they do not have money. The Filipinos have no money because the countrys wealth is Thinking Time: The Misadventures of the Street Strategist Vol. 12 236 inequitably distributed in favor of a few rich. Wealth is inequitably distributed because the labor sector does not have a bigger share of the wealth. Labor does not have a bigger share because they are mispriced and undervalued. Labor is undervalued because they do not have an equal footing to enter into a fair contract with the rich employers. A hungry stomach does not last one day of bargaining. To gain a stronger footing, the government should step in and prescribe a higher minimum wage. But the government does not want a higher wage because they are afraid the businesses would have lower revenues as a result of higher labor wages. The businesses cannot maintain their revenues in the faces of higher costs because the demand for their goods and services do not increase. The demand for goods and services do not increase because the labor class are not rich, therefore they have lesser disposable money. The people have no money because the wealth is inequitably in the hands of a few rich.

Thus, we are locked in an ever diminishing circle. Community of inequality Lets view this from another perspective. According to a World Bank study, 1/3 of the wealth of the Philippines is owned by only 5% of the Filipinos. This is a huge disparity. This is an egregious distribution of wealth. In economics, the Gini coefficient is the measure the gap between the rich and the poor. What does this statistic mean? Try to visualize a community of 100 of your friends. For every PhP100 spent within this community, after all is said and done, these expenditures and incomes will eventually settle as asset or wealth distributions. Of every PhP100 in asset, PhP33.3 goes to only 5 of your friends (PhP6.70 per pax). The balance of P66.6 is distributed among the reminding 95 friends (PhP0.70 per pax). Can you imagine how inequitable that is? Thats a ratio of 9.5 to Why Filipinos Are Not Rich 237 1, or 950%. And did you forget something? Those 5 friends of yours were actually not doing any work at all. They were playing golf all day, while your other 95 friends were the ones toiling under the hot sun, fighting against each other, backstabbing each other, and knocking on doors at night to sell products. Is that fair? What is really callous is that your rich 5 friends have billions of money that they could not possibly consume in ten lifetimes. Single solution And yet you ridicule me for proposing a single solitary action, that is, a legislated minimum wage of P20,000 ($400 at $1=PhP50)? Please remember, I am not advocating communism, socialism, or confiscation of property. I am only advocating the correct valuation of labor, the world market price for labor. Why cant our teachers be paid like the teachers in Singapore? And Singapore has zero natural resources to rely on unlike the

Philippines? Squander Myth: The Filipinos are poor because they squander money. I heard so many upper class people say this. I even heard on radio somebody who cited their rich neighbor whose children squandered their inheritance. But many Filipinos are fortunate enough to inherit wealth? A few thousands? We have about 35 million workers, and thats the majority. They have nothing to squander. Job search Myth: The Filipinos dont look for jobs. I find this too simplistic. Filipinos are looking for jobs so much so that millions of Filipinos in search of work worldwide. Maybe there are too few jobs here in the country. I have repeated many times why is there only a few jobs around. That is why I wrote several chapters on the topic of job creation as a result of the Hyperwage Theory. Thinking Time: The Misadventures of the Street Strategist Vol. 12 238 Maybe the jobs are not paying well enough. If the actually wages are lower than the threshold reservation wage (the point at which the worker is indifferent if he has a job or not), then maybe thats the reason they do not apply for jobs. Remember if you work in the US for one year that is equivalent to 10 years in the Philippines. Lazy Myth: The Filipinos are lazy. You must be kidding me. Give each one a minimum wage of PhP20,000 and youll see. Currently, among the best workers abroad are Filipinos. And you and I both know that. Unsaving Myth: The Filipinos dont save. Of course, the savings rate in this country is low. Of course, the Filipinos dont save. We have half of the country living below the poverty line and you expect savings? But the top 5%, yes, they do save. Save for what? Should that money be shaved off a little bit and shared back to the workers in form of higher wages that will be used to buy the goods and services owned the same top 5%? It will all go back to the businessmen anyway. Naturally rich The Filipinos are naturally rich. If we monetize the value of our entire natural resources nationwide we would have a higher per capita wealth than Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore. But why is it that these city-states have a higher per capita income than the Philippines given that fact that they have no natural resources? Simple. They put a value to their intellectual capital and human capital. In Hong Kong, if you cant afford to pay about PhP25,000 for a domestic helper, then dont have one. If you cant afford to pay PhP30,000 for a sales clerk, then dont be in business. But do you know that happened? Why Filipinos Are Not Rich 239 Businesses flourished. And they have domestic helpers who are nurses or principal teachers from the Philippines. Hong Kong is the 4th or 5th largest financial center in the world and it is only about 1/5 the size of Cebu province and it have zero natural resources. It imports water from China, can you imagine that? Singapore imports vegetables from Indonesia or Malaysia. Why arent the Filipinos rich when in fact they should be? It is because the minimum wage workers are paid slavery wages, very far from the world market price for labor with is the US price.

Since they have slavery wages, they have little purchasing power. With little purchasing power, there is little domestic market. When there is little domestic market there are few businesses. When there are few businesses, then there are fewer employees, and since there are fewer employees, there is little purchasing power. And if there is little purchasing power there is little domestic market and so on and so forth. Few rich, thin middle class The Philippines has a very thin middle class, as with any other Third World country. It is the middle class who provide entrepreneurship, the small businesses that is 95% of the number of establishments. Again, this thin middle class is due to the egregious concentration of wealth in the top 5% of the population. How do we then solve the inequitable distribution of wealth? With only one stroke. A legislated minimum wage of about P20,000 ($400) probably staggered over five years. I am tempted but would not discuss here all the economic benefits and non-economic benefits of Hyperwage Theory because I had done that in my 33-chapter book. Before anyone criticizes Hyperwage Theory, it would do justice if you read it first. In the same manner that I read as much economic textbooks and journals before I finally set into writing my idea of Hyperwage. What I am saying is this: The Filipinos are not rich but that is not what is supposed to be. We have the natural resources that should have given us the Thinking Time: The Misadventures of the Street Strategist Vol. 12 240 power of the purse, the power of wealth. The Filipinos are supposed to be rich. And there is one solution to correct this anomaly. Give labor its true value. Suppose the businesses give back PhP100 billion in wages back to the people. Assuming a propensity to consume of 80%, the economic multiplier is theoretically 5 times, and the entire nationwide economy will be richer by PhP500 billion. This is the beauty of Hyperwage Theory. Instead of business annihilation, there would be economic redemption. Again, I have discussed this fully in my book on Hyperwage. I hope I can meet my Henry Dennison, the multi-millionaire that Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith called crazy but who eventually caused the latter to reverse his economic thought. If you recall in my Hyperwage book, Dennison argued that the rich few like himself have a bigger share of the income stream which sucks the economic wealth away from the economic system. Dennison argued that the income stream to the poor should be increased. Who will be my Dennison who would believe the Street Strategists Hyperwage Theory and become its advocate? And who will be my Galbraith? As I narrated previously, the famous Galbraith was once a Harvard professor who flipped his economic thought and reversed his ideas and finally adopted the very radical, ridiculed, and controversial ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Asymptotic hyperinflation Will there be hyperinflation under Hyperwage Theory? I have discussed this fully and the answer is that there will asymptotic hyperinflation, that is a hyperinflation with a ceiling, and that ceiling is the world market price. Lets take a look at this illustration. This is a simple one but if we analyze common products (vegetables, cooking oil, paper, newspapers, etc.) in this manner, we will have a clear idea of what asymptotic hyperinflation is. Assume a person eats half a kilo of rice a day. With a domestic helpers wages of P2,000 per month, then a person earns PhP76.90 daily.

Assuming the current price of rice is PhP30/kg then he will Why Filipinos Are Not Rich 241 consume PhP15 of rice daily. He will have a net on only PhP61.90 per day. On the other hand, under Hyperwage, is monthly rate is PhP20,000 and his daily rate is PhP769. What will be the price of rice under Hyperwage? About PhP50/kg? Where did we get this price? We assume a comparable quality of rice in the expensive city of Hong Kong which is priced about PhP50/kg. Surely, we could not be above Hong Kong price under our Hyperwage Theory. Thus, after spending for a half kilo of rice, the helper obtains a net of PhP744. Net disposable income So which is better, a net of PhP46.90 under our current low wage regime or a net of PhP744 under Hyperwage Theory? What if rice surges up to PhP100/kg? This means our rice will be higher than that in the US or Singapore or Hong Kong? Thats seems impossible. We could not be above these expensive cities, could we? Even assuming it is PhP100/kg, but how much rice can one eat? Still half a kilo so that will cost him PhP50 daily, and his net is PhP719 daily. Now, apply the same to a can of Coke, a kilo of cabbage, an IBM Laptop, an Ericsson cellphone or a Sony TV. How do we know what will be the prices when we adopt Hyperwage? Simple, call the US or Singapore prices, and you can use these prices as your reference prices. IBM pricing policy Do you really think the price of an IBM laptop will rise 100% once minimum wages are raised 1,000%? No way. It may rise by 5% to 15% but never by 100% because the world market price for an IBM laptop is our reference point. If laptops are being sold in this country at P100,000 each, do you really think it would be sold at P200,000 because the minimum wage is now P20,000? Why should we pay double than US prices? Thinking Time: The Misadventures of the Street Strategist Vol. 12 242 See my point? At any rate, I have discussed all these issues in my 33-week discourse on Hyperwage Theory in 2005. Human capital There are several factors of production in an economic system. Our economic theories emphasize the benefits of using the market price of each of these factors. Our theories frown upon subsidies because they distort the allocation and efficiency of capital. Yet, there is one factor that is not merely an inanimate factor of production, a factor that cannot be made to wait for market forces to determine its price. This is human capital. In the Third World countries, if we wait for market forces to determine the market price for labor, such time may never come in our lifetimes. Why? Because a hungry stomach cannot wait for market forces. If First World countries value labor at $7.50 per hour, without government intervention, do you think human capital in Third World countries will stop working unless paid the market price of labor? They cannot survive half a day without food. They will accept anything to survive. Why arent Filipinos rich? What makes a country or its people rich? Education? We have a literacy rate that is one of the highest in

the world at 95% or more, yet we are belong to the poorest of nations. Can we econometrically say that education is what makes a country rich? Statistics says no. Natural resources? We have one of the richest natural resources in the world, yet we belong to the Third World. Surely, natural resources is not what makes a nation rich, is it? Statistics says no. English? We are the third largest English speaking country in the world, but we wallow in poverty not wealth. Is English what makes a country rich? Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong dont have half of our English skills, yet why are we mere domestic helpers to them, rather than being their rich employers? Or is there a possibility that Why Filipinos Are Not Rich 243 English is not such a relevant factor we think it is? I admit the BPO industry has employed hundreds of thousands but do you really expect us to become a First World country with this? This is Third World mentality. To attract call centers to the Philippines, we need to slave our college graduates as phone operators? Isnt it possible that we will perpetuate our status as Third World workers for First World businesses? Low wages? For the last hundred years our strategy has always been low wages but why are we poor? Maintaining low wages means that you want the people to earn less than their US counterparts and therefore keep the people in check under the strategy of poverty. Yet, how come low cost of labor did not help our businesses become world-class players like Nokia or Intel or Samsung? Isnt it obvious that maintaining low wages has kept us in Third World status? Can you economically argue that low wages are what makes a country rich? Statistics says no. Low purchasing power? Low wages means low purchasing power. Answer me this: Does SM or Ayala go to Maasin Leyte because of low wages? No. The big businesses go to places where the people have purchasing power. Purchasing power is due to high wages of the people. Isnt it obvious that Jollibee goes to the US because of the high purchasing power despite the high labor cost? Why is SMC in Australia? Why is ABS-CBN in Saudi Arabia? Economically, what makes a country richer, low purchasing power or high purchasing power? Yes, indeed, why arent Filipinos rich? Why is there a huge gap between the rich and the poor? Why is management paid 100 times higher than the lowest employee in this country while in some countries it is only 10 times? What is your solution to correct this situation? As I have pointed out, it is not high education, it is not natural resources, it is not command of English, and it is not low salary that makes a country rich. It is how you value the poorest of the poor. It is how you value least of the least. It is how you value human capital. It is giving labor its true world-market value. It is Hyperwage. ( * * * * * Thads Bentulan _ January 18,25, 2007 * * * * *) Thinking Time: The Misadventures of the Street Strategist Vol. 12 244