Inflation is an economic phenomenon that is an outcome of cause-and-effect. And, unfortunately, it contributes to the expense line of the poverty equation — higher prices result in weaker purchasing power. What this means for the average consumer is that she will simply need to find ways to make more money to make ends meet. The only way to deal with inflation is to stay ahead of it. And this means increasing income.
Unfortunately, wages don’t go up on a prayer. They are subject to the law of supply-and-demand. This is ultimately what sets labour rates just like the prices of any other commodity in a free market. When jobs are abundant and labour is scarce, wages go up. When jobs are scarce and labour is abundant wages go down.
Add the hard reality that if you spend more than what you make over the long term you progressively get poorer, not richer. You really can’t work around that simple arithmetic of poverty. Filipinos have both failed to stay ahead of inflation or, for many more, have simply failed to catch up with it. This is why the Philippines remains a poor country.
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To be fair, staying poor is easy. Getting rich is hard. If getting rich was easy, there’d be a lot more rich people than poor people. It takes smarts to beat poverty and it takes exceptional skills to become wealthy. And that’s the reason the poor outnumber the rich.
The short of it is that Filipinos need to get a bit more clever if they aspire to prosper. Whining about inflation and praying for money simply won’t get them there.
Webmaster of Get Real Philippines