One group of citizens in a meeting spontaneously agreed to donate the jewelry they wore to the National Treasury. One by one, several senators have renounced their pork barrel. After being criticized for offering only "cosmetic cuts" in their share of pork, congressmen are now offering a month’s pay to the National Treasury.
The contagion is spreading beyond the political sphere.
Businessmen have come forward, promising to pitch in. One religious minister elected congressman is considering legislation that would tax businesses run by religious organizations.
Several leaders of religious organization – such as Eli Soriano – agreed with the proposal. Others – such as El Shaddi’s Mike Velarde – began invoking the constitutional separation between church and state to oppose the proposal.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines joined in the discussion asserting that what the national confronted was a "crisis of values." It was this crisis that had to be addressed if we are to fix our lives and redeem out fate.
But the intervention about the "crisis of values" was not complete.
True, official corruption ransacks the public coffers and compromises the people’s future. Some work needs to be done about that. But the bishops should also address the corruption of the civil culture: the evasion of taxes not only by the rich but also the poor, the culture of dependence on public dole-outs; the refusal to accept the market disciplines necessary to conserve the public commons.
I recall, in the mid-nineties, talking to several bishops in what turned out to be a futile effort to avert the CBCP’s resistance to the expansion of value-added taxation that they described as "anti-poor." I struggled to explain to the few bishops I could get hold of that VAT that this revenue system was actually more just, more democrative and definitely pro-poor.
At around the same time, in 1995, the bishops backed a populist upsurge called "Kilusang Rollback" spearheaded by leftwing militant groups. The oil price adjustments, too, were demonized as being "anti-poor."
We likewise tried explaining to the bishops that rolling back oil prices then would lead to imprudent consumption, massive public subsidies and increased importation of the hazardous commodity.
Facing midterm elections, the Ramos administration backed down in the face of populist agitation. In that year, about P30 billion had to be shelled out by the national government to support the Oil Price Stabilization Fund in a situation where pumps prices were much lower than the price actually paid for imported oil.
In that year, too, because government bowed to populism, oil imports jumped up by something like 30 percent. This depleted our dollar reserves and was obviously due to oil prices not being fully reflective of the real costs. There was obviously imprudent consumption of the commodity, since our economy did not grow as much as the growth in consumption demand for oil.
There were, in addition, larger social costs to pay for increased and unwise consumption of oil. Much of these additional social costs – pollution mitigation, health care for the victims of pollution, etc – were borne by the public sector.
When the oil industry was finally deregulated, the debts of the OPSF were passed on to government. That means money that could have been used for education and health care which principally benefit the poor was instead used to subsidize gasoline prices which was consumed principally by the rich.
The bishops thought that by joining the clamor for artificial and heavily subsidized oil pricing, they were being "pro-poor." They were being naive. The subsidies paid out to fix oil prices to politically acceptable levels constitute one of the tributary streams that feed into the large river we now call the "fiscal crisis."
Again, unavoidably, the poor will bear the brunt of the fiscal crisis in terms of inferior educational system and substandard public health care – not to mention joblessness and misery that could have been relieved by increased public spending on infrastructure, homelessness due to insufficient public investments in the housing programs. And all these because we chose to privilege car owners with cheapers gas prices.
The demonstratons of generosity are good. They are definitely better than the demonstrations of greed and fiscal stupidity conducted by the militant populist groups demanding, at every turn, subsidies that actually benefit the rich and harm the poor.
But all the demonstrations of generosity are, in the last analysis, merely symbolic. They will produce valuable but scarce additions to our beleaguered National Treasury.
The real solution to the looming fiscal crisis requires paying for real costs.
In the same way that subsidizing gas benefits rich consumer with cars many times more than poor consumers without cars, subsidizing electricity rates benefits home with air conditioners many times more than homes without air conditioners.
We must prepare our people to pay for real costs. While that hurts in the short term, it is a saner way to run the economy. If we do not do that, the costs further down the road will be many times greater – in all probability, economic collapse due to the unsustainable subsidies.
If the bishops want to revolution in values. It should begin not with platitudes about what is good and bad. It should begin with educating our people on the brass tacks about how the economy works – and why it is ultimately more virtuous to take the pain of paying transparent prices than forcing government to take resources away from more focused socials services.
The debate, ultimately, should not be about bringing yayas to Beijing. It should be about every Filipino accepting real costs, not demanding subsidies in order to create artificial pricing and exercising prudence in the consumption of socially valuable goods.
I have said this in this space before. I will say it again: the real crisis lies in the poverty of public understanding about how national economies should be managed.
That poverty in understanding makes it politically costly for the correct policies to be put in place. While it is firstly the task of government to explain the brutal reality to our people, other groups like the religious organization who have joined in the debate, should accept public enlightenment as part of their responsibility.
Let this at least be a crisis that permanently educates us all.