Originally Posted by
Saga
Si Juan ug si Pedro.
Si Juan naa sya 20 pesos ug si Pedro wala bisan piso.
Hibalo si Juan nga ang iyang 20 sakto ra sa 20 ka adlaw ug hibalo pud sya nga si Pedro isang kahig isang tuka kay bisan piso wala man.
Juan: Pedro dali. Mag negosyo ta.
Pedro: Sige!
Juan: Naa ko 20. Ipalit ug sundang ug kawayan nya himoon nimo ug bbq stick. Tapos ibaligya sa merkado piso ang usa ka stick.
Pedro: Sige. Ako bahala. Ako'y mo trabaho kay imoha man ang puhunan.
Tuod man si Pedro nilakaw ug nipalit ug sundang ug kawayan. Unya nagbuhat sya ug bbq stick ug gibaligya sa merkado samtang si Juan natug ug napahuway lang sa balay. Nahuman ang adlaw nga si Pedro daghan ug kita gkan sa bbq stick nga iyang gibaligya. Ni report sya ni Juan.
Pedro: Daku ta ug kita. Ang imohang 20 nahimong 100.
Juan: Maau Pedro. Ambi ng kwarta. (Gihatag pud ni Pedro) Ang halin nga 100 atong kuhaan ug 20 kay mao na akong pohonan. So ang ato jud gi kita kay 80 nalang. Kung dili tungod sa akong kabuotan ug sa akong 20 nga pohonan, ikaw Pedro uyamot ug isang kahig isang tuka ra gihapon unta ka. Pero ayaw ka balaka bahinan tka ug 1 para naa kay kwarta.
Pedro:
Ang resulta, si Pedro nahimong ulipon ni Juan kay ang ihatag ni Juan niya igo ra man usa ka adlaw. Para ugma naa sya kwarta kinahanglan mo trabaho napud sya. Pero si Juan nagkadaku ug nagkadaku ang kwarta.
I know most of you will not agree to this, workers are no different from prostitutes. Like prostitutes, ang atong pohonan ang atong lawas. Dapat mo kaon ta aron baskog ug ligon ang lawas aron may kakayahan mo trabaho. Ang prostitute magpa gwapa ug ilahang ampingan ilahang lawas aron naay magkagusto nila.
Like prostitute ang atong gikita sakto or igo ra nga mabuhi ta ug dapat kada adlaw ta mo trabaho aron naay kobrahon panahon sa adlaw sa sweldo.
Ang deperensya ra sa worker ug prostitute kay ang prosti ang iyang gibaligya ang iyang lawas para maka provide ug pleasure sa iyaha customer nya ang worker kay iya gibaligya iyaha lawas para maka provide ug work force para maka generate ug income ang kompanya asa sya nag trabaho. But both of them are slave to a system of a society that exploit those who are in need.
with this example do you still think that we do no have the right to demand for higher wages?
I don't agree, because your argument is based on false premises. You make it sound like workers have no choice but to be workers, when in reality many workers rise to the top and become CEOs, some people are self-employed (Doctors, lawyers, etc) and still others are workers who decided to establish their own business. It is also based on the very dangerous false presumption, that demanding and being given higher wages is automatically a win for the worker (I will explain later why this is wrong.)
Next, there is an ideology in your argument lifted out of the book of the communists, the one that implies business owners are lazy and that their workers are doing all the work. The only people who say such things, in my opinion, are people who have never started their own business, but want to bring down other people down to their level. If it's that easy, may I ask what it is that's stopping you from starting your own business? If it's as simple as your story goes, why wouldn't everyone want to be Juan and make money out of other people's work? The reason is that everyone wants to be Juan, but most people have the mentality and intelligence of Pedro. It takes an intelligent, hard-working individual gifted with vision and luck to become a successful businessman, contrary to the presumption that he is merely a parasite, the reality is most Juans are benevolent beings who bestow employment to people like Pedro who otherwise would be doing nothing but sitting on their *** wondering what to do or drinking all day and beating up their wife
Now I will explain why getting high wages is only a very temporary improvement in the life of a worker, with permanent risks to his wellbeing. When you receive a wage increase, it automatically increases the business risk of the investors/owners, this means the owners are much more likely to fire employees after a wage increase, and investors are much more likely to slow or halt investment when wages increase. It's simple, they are going to be paying more for more or less the same productivity, and that increases business risk. In other countries with minimum wage, they always match the wage to the productivity of the workers. If they are more productive, the wage goes up. It is not necessarily tied to inflation, but often is because inflation increases as a country becomes more productive.
In the Philippines however, wages are increased without regard to productivity, and as a result we have had massive high inflationary periods in the past and continue to suffer from relatively high inflation even today. This inflation erodes the buying power of everyone, workers included. The very thing you are complaining, the prices of goods going up, is ironically caused by the thing you are demanding, higher wages. As a result you enter into a vicious cycle where wages keep going up, but inflation in response, also spikes up higher and higher. This makes everyone poor, but the worse thing is it makes businessmen poor, and as much as that might make you happy to see businessmen suffer, know that in the end it is going to be the employees who will ultimately suffer the most as businesses collapse and employment opportunities dry up.
When I say we are the most expensive country in Asia to invest in, in terms of minimum wage, that has nothing to do with being paid the highest salary. It has to do with the wage commensurate to productivity and the price of goods. We are not poor because we are paid a small salary, we are poor because goods are extremely expensive due to explosive inflation both past and present. And funny enough, this inflation was caused by high minimum wages. If you still fail to put two and two together, do you ever wonder why a country like Singapore which was 10x poorer than the Philippines is in the 1960's is now one of the richest countries in Asia despite not having a minimum wage for most of its history?
Don't blame the businessmen, blame yourself. Get better educated, acquire new skills and through hard work and determination you can improve yourself rather than demand the government fix your problems for you (which they never can and never do anyway)...
Moral of your story that you missed is this: If Juan wasn't around, what would Pedro have done? He wouldn't have come up with the idea on his own, since he clearly lacks intelligence and vision needed to make a business enterprise succeed... without Juan, Pedro would have surely starved to death and in the same manner, a country without businessmen will slowly starve to death. If you don't believe me, go to North Korea and see for yourself
OT: Regarding the prostitute comparison, I think you're wrong here as well. Most prostitutes are either self-employed or they are in partnership with their bugaw. You might look down on prostitutes but many of them earn more in a day than most ordinary workers earn in a month. =P
though cost of living in cebu is not that high compare to Manila.
Reply With Quote
Posting Permissions
