It’s a masterpiece of a masterplan in nation building that one could never in one’s wildest dreams ever imagine coming out of a Yellow Cult leader’s pointed head.
Yet it only took the basic common sense of a lowly unrefined mayor from the country’s marginalized South to get the country back on its rail tracks again – well positioned to take on the challenge of hiking up its daunting socioeconomic Mt. Everest – the top of which the rest of the East Asia gang (Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and mainland China) are already all partying on.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
TRAIN Law – It’s a brilliant tax scheme that cuts deep into the heart of the Pinoy’s deeply ingrained tax-evading culture. Considering Filipinos’ propensity to under-declare or not declare their actual income, there’s simply no escaping getting taxed – now that even basic Coca Cola, Marlboro and petroleum are the government’s way of getting back at you. A massive BUILD BUILD BUILD program needs deep pockets to draw from. A fundamental in starting to build anything is that Jerry Maguire line… “Show me the money!”.
Train our Youth – Free college education is a privilege only those in an elite group of mostly Northern European nations could afford to provide. The administration’s priority in beefing up the country’s human intellectual capital takes center stage, realizing from the last Aquino term that we cannot afford stupid incompetent people manning our stations and ships anymore.
Train Systems – All you have to see is GRP’s classic juxtapositional article: Manila’s primitive public transport system: A national embarrassment! to convince yourself we have a lot of catching up to do in getting the blood arteries of the country flowing healthily again. It’s basic common sense for any decently functional country or emerging power aspirant: a smooth flow of goods, workers and tourists is fundamental to a buzzing economy- not something that should be fooled around with (like how incompetently managed the system was under Mar Roxas, Joseph Abaya, and PNoy, making them all worthy of getting run over a train for).
Why the opposition is making so much noise about “fake news”, “human rights”, and “press freedom” is simply because they are rendered speechless on the weightier topics that really matter in the debate – those on the subject of strategies and visions the Duterte administration is hell bent on pursuing.
The Silence of Yellowtard Lambs in more important topics is really due to the fact that affirming Duterte’s strategy means admitting 30 years of Yellow rule was an utter failure – nothing but a sinister power- and wealth-grabbing scam. Millions of brainwashed Filipinos simply all got duped for that long guys!
We all know it’s culture that’s got to change, but you have to admit this time: Changing the top politician in the land does work wonders once in a super blue blood moon. 10-year-valid passports, 5-year-valid driver’s licenses, a third Telco coming in, subway to Manila’s airport, no more tax evasion, IS rebellion crushed, Reds finally labelled as terrorists, no more laglag bala, Federal setup to usher in peace in the South, MM to be replaced by clean-and-green New Clark City (ZaZoZon expanding!), friends with China again, Cha-cha wheels finally rolling,… we simply can’t list them all.
Can things be moving any better? What have you guys in Yellow shirts gotta say?
All together stupefied now… NGANGA
Zealous revolutionary advocate of bringing back common sense for the common good in a land of dysfunctional and delusional zombies.
Zaxx, have you even READ the new law? I have. It is indeed a ‘masterplan’, but sadly it’s a plan to get this country’s economy out of the ICU and into a nice comfortable coffin. Here’s what it does:
– Narrows the tax base to, essentially, business owners only, who will now be hit with one of the highest tax rates in Asia (possibly THE highest). For example, a business with a gross income of 1.2M will pay at least 96,000 a year in tax. At the sole discretion of the authorities (see below), it could well be more than that. Since operating costs normally account for at least 70% of gross revenue (often more like 80-90%), and municipalities impose additional taxes and fees, small businesses will be paying out 40%+ of net profits in taxes. Anybody with any sense will shut down their business RIGHT NOW and move to Singapore.
– Gives the BIR complete authority to decide (a) who pays what (b) real property values. In practice, they’ve always been allowed to do (a). I’m pretty sure (b) is unconstitutional. Both powers are illogical and are likely to result in all sorts of new abuses and opportunities for corruption.
– Gives the BIR unlimited powers of entry, search and seizure, without any requirement for a warrant.
– Laughably, attempts to distinguish between foreign tax earners and local tax earners, so that foreigners (companies and individuals) can be hit with an additional tax.
– Retains the ridiculously complex and wasteful tax-filing procedures that make doing business so horribly painful in this country, and result directly in the well-known problem of ‘leakage’.
– Imposes VAT on imports.
– Implements a whole bunch of pointless exceptions and additions to VAT rules.
– Imposes taxes on fuels (about 6%) … which would be perfectly reasonable IF efficient foreign technology for using (or superseding) such fuels were not effectively blocked from the country.
– Mandates that sweetened drinks must use either HFCS or coconut sugar as sweetening agents to avoid a sugar tax, which is utterly f-ing bizarre. I can only assume some congressman’s best buddy has a HFCS wholesale business (or a chain of treatment centers for diabetics).
– Imposes a bunch of piffling stamp taxes that will cost more to administer than they will return in revenue (which is most likely the whole point).
– Makes it even harder for retailers to use POS machines, thus condemning everyone to little bits of handwritten paper for the foreseeable future.
– Appropriates public funds to subsidize the sugar cane industry.
– Subsidizes fuel for those smoke-belching deathtraps called Jeepneys.
– Subsidizes rice for the obese.
– Sends piffling amounts of money to the destitute: another program which will cost more to administer than it will pay out in support.
Positives?
– The only sensible provision is a zero rating on electric vehicles, but it remains to be seen whether the BOC and other agencies will continue to keep them out of the country by other means.
– The mandatory VAT-registration limit is raised to P3million.
Hilariously, TRAIN refers to a crime it calls “economic sabotage”. Since TRAIN is itself an act of economic sabotage, this may be the only known instance of a law declaring itself illegal.
In other words, it’s all exactly what you would expect from a third-world government. There is nothing radical in it AT ALL.
That’s right marius… it’s “economic sabotage” for those in the wrong type of business. It will likely kill off some business models that make a profit at the expense of public health and the environment. If you used to make a very slim profit in the past but are now taxed to death under TRAIN – then thank TRAIN for helping you realize it’s time to innovate with something radically different.
Just take the example of gasoline-based businesses. Rather than cry and get depressed over thinning profit margins, why not use electricity-powered transport or move operations to a web-based platform? I doubt businesses will simply move out of PH overnight; this hugely consumption-driven economy fueled by OFW remittances is not a market that is too easy to skip off.
Besides, Filipinos, like roaches, have always proven their resilience and survival skills through think or thin. The funny thing is – in all the difficulty they go through you’ll still see them smiling. They might be drinking less Coke, but trust me – they’ll find something cheaper to guzzle… and that just might be the next big thing!
Meanings with no purpose are useful for meaningless debates on what the “meaner” meant. And that’s what #politics is all about – misreading.
We have to see to believe. The Aquino Cojuangco era was full of :political propaganda, extolling their heroism and sainthood; full of corruption; corrupt people were everywhere, from top to bottom. We are looking, if Pres. Duterte, can deliver his promises.
To see is to believe.
Train our Youth
Free college education is a privilege only those in an elite group of mostly Northern European nations could afford to provide.
Next years (2018-2019) annual tuition fee is € 2060 ( = approx PHP 110250) in the Netherlands. So, school/education is NOT free