Amazing video but it speaks of an industry in collapse and the wiping out of the livelihoods of thousands of Filipinos: one of the under-reported stories at a time when media's gutted of resources, talent, and audience to bring the real news to the public.
Anecdotal reports are all we have to go on, aside from the (under) reporting of government. Among these is the downsizing (euphemism for firings) going on in those companies that still manage to stay alive: Linked In, for one, has many people now looking for work...
Again, quietly, there are companies that decided to end operations because they don't see customers coming back for the duration of Covid; others ready to open, decided not to open anymore, cutting losses by liquidating equipment. Others will operate more to keep people employed.
There are only two events within living memory that people can refer to: World War II and the 1980s under Marcos' collapsing the economy. The Buy and Sell instincts of Filipinos during Jap. Occupation and Twilight of Marcos on full display in Viber groups.
In contrast government's response is to dust off pre-Covid mantras (Build Build Build) which had already been drastically limited in scope pre-Covid (to items to be completed within current term), or to reverse course: prior pitch was to cut incentives for foreign investment...
...now the pitch is, to loosen oversight on granting incentives, placing them strictly in the hands of the President, which will provide a bonanza of favoritism but little in the way of an improvement on the system they set out to scrap.
So it seems that government is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic --for the ones taking their responsibilities seriously-- while the rest just figure out get-rich-quick schemes to buy the next election or retire fatly; reliance on POGOs which entails irritating Beijing...
points to how self-centered and short-sighted they are: they can't even go all the way with pro-China policy, so big bet on China won't even pay off, but what is paying off is the here and now of keeping POGOs operational because it's giving middle and upper class a lifeline.
In the past, conventional wisdom was whatever governments did, our economy would be OK because it had an umbilical cord to world via remittances: for the first time in a generation, that umbilical cord's frayed if not cut. The whole consumption economy's taken a hit but worse...
will be malnourished moving forward; so hitting not only at recovery, but at the precarious economic status of even the middle class. Radicals might think this will be a political bonanza but as 1972 and the GMA eras and current dispensation have proven, do not underestimate...
the craving not just of the upper, but middle and upper lower, classes for order and stability at all costs, particularly when times are tough.
