There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this as the intent is
to provide more food given limited resources. This lesson should be so obvious
but it’s lost in today’s political landscape especially among the supporters of
some senatorial bets. Watching ANC’s Harapan 2019 allowed me to see what some
of the senatorial bets are promising the Filipinos if they get elected. To the
surprise of absolutely no one, many of the candidates are offering free (fill
in the blank) to the Filipino people.
Healthcare, check-ups, college, allowance for college,
housing, etc. – these are only some of the things being promised this election
season. Now, free things sound great. I mean while San Marino is better than
Ligo, Ligo is still better than no sardines at all. There is no doubt about
that. The problem comes when you think about who’ll end up paying for all these
free things? At the end of the day, government gets money from taxes and
government then decides how it’ll distribute these taxes to the country. So
with limited resources, you’d expect quality to go down just to provide this
free thing to everyone.
This is easiest to see through an illustration. Take free
check-ups, a promise by more than one senatorial bet. Doctors spent a lot of
money going to medical school so asking them to offer free services is
definitely out of the question. Government will have to pay its doctors a fare
wage. That doctor’s salary is paid for by the government, which gets its money
from taxes which – surprise! – is paid by you, the taxpayer, whether or not you
avail of the service.
I’ve been to a number of public hospitals in crowded cities
and they’re not pleasant places to be in. As there’s a promise of free check-ups,
doctors will undoubtedly see more patients in a day and as such will have to
allot less time for each patient. Now, while there are doctors who are able to
provide a quality check-up in very limited time, such is not the case for all
doctors. Most will have to rush through their patients just to provide everyone
with this free check-up. Again, quantity wins over quality.
Sad as it may sound, quantity healthcare is NOT what we
need. What we need is quality healthcare. Actually, we don’t need quantity
anything. What we need is quality things! And it applies to practically
everything! Here’s a list:
- · We don’t need more roads. We need nice roads.
- · We don’t need more bridges. We need quality bridges.
- · We don’t need more education. We need quality education.
- · We don’t need more laws. We need good quality laws
I’d like to share with you a story about cheap tertiary
education as opposed to quality tertiary education. I’m part of UP Batch 2006
(which means I entered UP in 2006). We were the last batch in which UP charged
students Php300/unit. That would go for roughly Php7,000/semester including
fees and other miscellaneous items. Considering how much college tuition is in
other universities, UP education was a steal! In 2007, UP raised its tuition to
roughly 20,000/semester for all new students to address the dwindling subsidy
by the government.
It was in my first year that I saw how “okay” the quality of
education was in UP. I mean, the teachers were amazing – don’t get me wrong.
They were brilliant and could teach very well! Though I had heard they weren’t
compensated as well. The common point being raised was that UP professors
taught in UP out of passion, not money. The “okay” quality I’m talking about
was from the state of the facilities. Our classrooms were cramped – they’re half
the size of the ones in ADMU. The chairs were old and dirty and there were
vandals written on practically all of them! Our Chemistry lab instructor had an
embarrassing moment where the iron ring she was using was too big for the
funnel but the lab wasn’t equipped for the funnel so she jokingly said that we
had to improvise and she ended up using masking tape to “reduce” the size of
the iron ring. In my computer programming class, we were all assigned one of
those big clunky computers in a very cramped computer lab but out of 25 units,
4 of them didn’t turn on so there were times when two students would have to
share a computer. The computers were running on outdated software as well. From
my recollection, I believe they were running on Windows 95… in 2007!
I loved my teachers and they deserved a better working
environment so they can teach to their fullest potential. That means multiple
sizes of iron rings, a fully stocked laboratory, clean tables and chairs, complete
laboratory equipment. Sadly, that wasn’t the case for my first years in college.
Contrast that to after 2007 when the new tuition fee had
been implemented. The College of Engineering had just renovated almost all of
their classrooms including the computer lab, which it now had many of. Our Physics
labs featured equipment like motion detectors which would be hooked up directly
to the computer so we could study uniform accelerated motion. Later on, I was
able to take another computer class and this time, it ran on Windows Vista and
on new hardware! Another engineering class featured a teacher using a camera
which was pointed down so that we could see how he solved engineering problems.
He used this in conjunction with his PowerPoint presentations which made a (quite
frankly) bright but boring professor teach more effectively to the students!
I’ve seen UP when it didn’t have money and I’ve seen UP when
it did have lots of money. And though they had to charge more for it, the
quality of the education that we got was undeniable even by those opposed to the
tuition hike. I wept when UP (and all state colleges and universities) was made
to make tuition for all students free. This means UP will have to become a
slave to the Philippine government, the entity that controls 100% of its budget
now. If UP continues to have students who will oppose the current or the next administrations
(which it will always have), it can simply choose to cut funding and leave UP
to deteriorate like it once did.
Free things don’t mean they’re free. Free things simply mean
that government officials will have more say in who gets funding. And so while
you and I was willing to give our taxes to fund college education, it may still
not go there.
If you’re familiar with the Midas touch, the government has
the opposite effect on everything it touches. Oppose free things. This is what
we should be fighting for in the upcoming elections.
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