Give overworked, underpaid workers LSD!

Workers in the Philippines are among the most overworked and underpaid in the world. That is why so many of them leave home to find work in other countries where working arrangements and pay are so much better. And somewhere in there is the elephant in the room, the humongous secret of keeping our balance as a nation.

The economy is the keel upon which the ship of any state is built. The keel needs to be sturdy and stable. The secret by which the Philippines has managed to keep an even keel and help it weather storm after storm is an uncanny ability to keep growing robust remittances from abroad while holding down domestic wages without descending into chaos.

Other countries with a working class so oppressed for far too long do not need political excuses to light up a revolution. Certainly not the Philippines, where a half-century of communist agitation just cannot seem to get the spark to lick the wick. Workers here seem too impervious and too resigned. They appear stoned.

And that is because the Philippine government, in its two-pronged socio-economic policy, has been hugely successful in feeding domestic workers LSD. Local labor gets an annual shot of LSD every first of May and feeds on that high for an entire year until the government gives the next shot the year after.

It is a prescribed dose administered year after year on local workers to complement the counterpart initiative of feeding overseas workers a steady unrestricted diet of the best perks and incentives that can be derived and offered from the fat of the land. LSD for the locals, five-star everything for OFWs. Can anything get better than that?

LSD, by the way, is not what you think it is. LSD is Lip Service Day, the new and more honest and realistic name for Labor Day. And that is because nothing stirs on Labor Day except the same tired old spirit nursed from the same tired old breasts of motherhood statements. And to everyone's amazement, just sucking up seems to work.

Or at least for the Philippine economy it does. Ours is a neat lesson in economics. The Asian Development Bank projects the Philippine economy to grow by 6.0 % this year and 6.2 % by next year. Do not look far for answers. The elephant has never left the room. OFW remittances are robust and coming. The cost for local wages is at bottomline.

Minimum wages in the Philippines range from a high of ?570 to a low of ?306. Philippine Statistics Authority data show there are 2.4 million minimum wage earners in the country as of 2020 but that 8 million of them are actually paid less. The average of ?330 minimum per day is just a measly $6USD at ?55 to the dollar.

On the other hand, OFW remittances in 2022 hit $36.14 billion USD in 2022. This is said to represent 8.9% of the country's gross domestic product. No wonder government strives mightily to keep the economic balance. Keep the input from abroad high and the output for the locals low. Do not disturb the balance. Give everything to one, LSD the other.