Is Michelle Obama Filipina?
Based solely on thinking patterns and world views, Michelle Obama might pass for your average Filipina (and Filipinos, too). Watch the video below and see and hear for yourself
One of the biggest hurdles to the Philippines’ economic development is the stubborn attachment of many in the population to a Zero Sum economic worldview. Put simply, they view the economy as one pie with a fixed size. Accordingly, if one’s slice of the pie is to get larger, someone else’s slice of the pie has to get smaller. This is the iron logic of believing that the pie is a fixed size.
Any newbie economist can tell you that the size of an economy’s “pie” is not fixed but grows based on the efficiency of that economy in attracting investments, the multiplier effect of monetary policy, and the economy’s general power of creating value for all its members. Unfortunately, this does not comport with how socialists and liberals like Mrs. Obama think. Tragically, this is also how many parts of the Filipino electorate think.
Just a random sampling of Filipino online messageboards and newspaper columns confirm the all abiding idea that if someone were to get ahead it is solely due to the fact that someone else suffered a loss. The concept of increasing the size of the total “pie” or of a win-win solution remain largely an alien notion. How did we get to this state of mind? It is almost excusable for Pinoys to think in these terms because the colonial experience of mass land appropriation by both Spanish and Church authorities still persist in most Pinoys’ mental DNA. It is indisputable, however, that one major part of maturing as a people is to move past mentalities spawed in the 1800s and earlier. It also no longer fits modern economic realities and holds us back from converting “dead capital” into a rising economic tide that lifts all boats.
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