Entertaining tourists and guests, and making them feel welcome and at-home make up a crucial pillar of the Philippine economy. Our national-pastime-turned-industry of singing, dancing, cracking jokes, and playing basketball provides our valued international and local visitors a good time to sit back and relax over San Miguel light and chicharon bulaklak pulutan while the locals sweat or belt it out to provide high-value entertainment.
The rapidly growing population comes with the extra baggage of graying folks retiring from productive work to become key beneficiaries of another huge pillar of the economy: health care and medical services. Hospital facilities are growing, with demand outpacing the supply of beds, instruments, and medical staff.
The Filipino diet fueled by the mall-based eat-out culture and the local congested eye-sore-filled environment are by-design configured to ensure you will eventually get sick and end up availing of imported big-pharma medication to salvage the remaining healthy cells in your slowly degrading body. The national beverage is Coke, which is basically liquified concentrated sugar with carbonation strong enough to melt away toilet stains. Sugar mixed with every form of oil, fat and lard is a nationally ingested poison (a type of legal drug) just about everyone is addicted to.
| 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 |
Media and TV are all about grabbing the biggest audience to entertain. Slapstick comedy shows are a magnet to viewers. Contests in singing, dancing, and showcasing beauty (rather than brains) make up a significant chunk of airtime. Hotels and resorts are in revival mode competing for tourists that have started to return after the pandemic. Airports and airlines expand to the ever-growing influx of visitors that have harkened to the call of our national “It’s more fun!” tagline.
All other components of the economy and society are geared towards supporting these two pillars: hospitality and hospital industries. For example, you need transportation to get to your entertainment gathering or event; you also need good mobile connections to call for help to bring an ailing neighbor to the nearest hospital. Students toil through years of rote memorization training to become care givers, nurses and doctors. Law students struggle to pass the board exam (some requiring 3 takes) with grand ambitions to eventually become a lawmaker who can pass laws that ensure the government collects enough taxes to fund the entire hospitality and hospital circus.
Highly skilled engineers, inventors and scientists are booted out as OFWs. After taking on the call of the pied piper to jump ship, these “modern-day heroes” send huge chunks of money to the big financial sinkhole called P.I. (often confused for a common expletive in the vernacular), as relatives and friends “patiently” expect (if not demand) the next remittance to arrive in time to keep the two pillar industries humming. Your uncle is in ICU after a heart attack; P200K needed for operation; please send money ASAP. Your obese sister needs regular dialysis and insulin shots; please commit to sending P20K a month right after each payday. Your father just got this eureka idea of opening a new Karaoke bar near the tourist belt; please send ALL your savings for initial capital ASAP.
There is no end in sight as to the opportunities Filipinos back home can think of to find ways to use your hard-earned OFW money for you, simply because you are either too dumb to spend it wisely on your own or because your plans for yourself pale in comparison to the greater priority needs of your unlucky kababayans still stuck in quicksand.
Beware: If you don’t plan to use your money, others will use it for you. – Zaxx
Parking money in a bank account (principle of saving for a rainy day) is not really encouraged for Filipinos – otherwise, someone will take notice of your growing heap of sitting cash and you will end up helplessly at the mercy of freeloaders and even being viewed as outright evil should you dare deny a loved one or friend in their moment of pressing need.
Abundantly blessed to high heavens with roughly 20 typhoons a year, the archipelago is a perfect storm for every type of calamity (flooding, landslides, volcanos, earthquakes, pollution – you name it) to ensure maximum probability that you end up requiring emergency medical services and thus contributing to the hospital industry’s cashflow.
Fireworks, guns, rebellions, terror attacks, dilapidated jeepneys, poorly maintained buses and ferry boats all work together to make it more fun in the health-hazard capital of Asia. One definition of fun is adventure, and what better way to have an adventure than to NOT KNOW how the next misfortune will hit you?
A visit to the Philippines is a test of faith that will get you closer to God in fervent prayers of desperation, or simply crossing your fingers (while you find your right leg vibrating involuntarily) till you make it out hopefully in one piece.
The new Bongbong Marcos administration is faced with the challenge of ensuring economic growth, the promise of every would-be heir to the throne. As a mass-importing consumer-driven economy (in contrast to a technology and manufacturing powerhouse) the new leaders of government should acknowledge what is important over what are low-priority distractions. Identifying these two major industries of hospitality and hospitals and knowing how everything else revolves around them as secondary elements of our unique ecosystem can turn the Philippine economy towards that grand unification-theory-based future every president would aspire for the people: an entertaining and comfortable place to live and eventually die in.
And by the way, if anyone wants a new business idea – there’s a good never-ending demand for coffins, necrological services and memorial lots propelled by the hospital industry’s key output: corpses (a.k.a. heroes – for fueling the political ambitions of the next line of Cory/Leni wannabees).
Zealous revolutionary advocate of bringing back common sense for the common good in a land of dysfunctional and delusional zombies.
Hospital industry and funeral homes will be the money makers due to the mass die off of people who took the kill shot. Hospitality business will never return to pre plandemic levels.
We need Marcos discipline to have progress. We will head for self-reliance…
The dick and cum comments of megget make more sense than this article. This anti Philippines article is nothing but blind pointless bashing.
Nobody is uniting around bbm. Not the middle class , smart , decente who are overwhelmingly pink.
Better hope that tallano gold can bail out the economy
Dayum, that rustles your jimmies with additional spouting nonsense conspiracies. You’re that crazy lol
maybe your “article” can bail out the philippines
Here’s your bailout plan guys…
“In 2020, tycoon Ramon S. Ang, who’s bankrolling the massive “airport city” in Bulacan, told the Inquirer that he sees the closure of Naia after 10 years and the land on which it sits being sold to raise trillions of pesos to pay off government debts.
For Ang, it would be best to eventually wind down Naia’s operations and sell or redevelop the airport complex, which is roughly 2.5 times the size of Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in Taguig.
“Sell the land, 646 hectares for P2 trillion, and pay for government debts,” Ang had said.”
business.inquirer.net/348785/dominguez-closing-naia-selling-its-land-an-option-for-bongbong-marcos#ixzz7V1pgZZkJ
That’ll take care of the NAIA rename issue.
————————————
As for the divisive image of Ninoy+Cory on the P500 bill, Rep. Cardema has already submitted a house resolution to replace their smirking faces with a nationalistic symbol for unity – in the same way the 3 heroes in the P1000 bill were recently replaced by the Philippine eagle.
Yellow-turned-Kakampink hopes of seeing Noynoy’s face added to the “hero+saint” combo are as dim as Leni’s dying movement.
If you are an OFW, beware of “freeloading relatives”, who ask for money; to solve their financial problems. They cannot solve it on their own…so, the ask you to solve it for them !
One way to shield yourself from abuse is to just give a contribution. It doesn’t mean that if a relative tells you his hospital bill is 100K PHP – you have to shoulder the entire sum. It just means you can simply chip in to share the burden.
Some OFWs go on a guilt trip for not sending the amount asked for, leaving them depressed instead of getting a sense of fulfillment for the chance to help.
Besides, Filipinos are not islands – they have truckloads of other friends, relatives and connections around whom they can ask help from. Just look at their lively social network accounts. So give without going broke, while keeping your sanity securely intact.
“Freeloading relatives” is the growing industry in our country…if you are an OFW; they expect you as a “good source of cash”…
Here’s why this Korean girl loves our country so much…
10 Reasons why I Love Philippines | Hana Cho
Good marketing may not only bring in visitors to the country but also eventually turn those visitors into residents who will stay for good. Let’s keep welcoming foreigners in with open arms.