Economic Reasons Against The RH Bill

Economic Reasons Against The RH Bill
By Dennis Yu (dennisjyu@gmail.com)

Here’s an article that shows why the RH Bill will be harmful to the Philippine economy. For the purposes of this article, I’ll focus on the RH Bill as a population control. Many pro-RH legislators deny that the RH Bill is about population control. But the truth is, it is.

To the mind of Juan de la Cruz, the RH Bill is presented as the solution to poverty. The argument is straightforward: less people, more wealth. A pro-RH poster shows a bowl of rice, with a few spoons, and another bowl (of the same size) with more spoons. I don’t need to be a financial analyst (of which I am) to know that 10 kilos of rice divided by 4 family members is greater than 10 divided by 10. This was exactly the fear of Malthus: the resources grow arithmetically while the population grows geometrically. However, Malthus was proven wrong by history.

The main error in Malthus’s theory is that he thinks of the resources as a zero-sum game: what I gain is your loss; conversely, what I lose is your gain. But the reality is more complex than that. Through technology, food production increased geometrically, even faster than the population growth.

Not only that. More and more are discovering that a growing population is the key to development. A strongly anti-Catholic magazine, The Economist, cannot but accept the evidence. See its article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2012/02/demography.

Even Malacañang's position, surprisingly, was in favor of a growing population. Well, that's at least before the SONA (see: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/05/02/12/growing-population-boon-ph-economy). And after the SONA, the Wall Street Journal says that the RH could derail Philippine economy. It says, “The Philippines doesn’t have too many people, it has too few pro-growth policies. [Mr. Aquino’s] promotion of a ‘reproductive health’ bill is jarring because it would put the Philippines in danger of following China’s path into middle-income development followed by a demographic trap of too few workers”. (See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577544542963426800.html)

Now supposing there is a positive correlation between poverty and population – something yet to be proven –, is the RH the way to control the population? The big problem with the RH is that it brings with it a change in mentality: contraceptive mentality. This is the big problem of Singapore today.

Lee Kwan Yew, the “father” of Singapore, the guy who transformed Singapore from a backwater island into a first world country, implemented a strong population control. The progress of Singapore can be attributed to many factors like work discipline and low level of corruption (both of which, the Philippines scores badly). But, for the sake of discussion, let’s attribute its progress to population control. Meaning, the strong population control is the primary cause of its progress – as many people believe naively.

However, Lee Kwan Yew now regrets the population control he implemented. In his article published in Forbes magazine (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0507/current-events-population-global-declining-birth-rates-lee-kuan-yew.html), he says, “there will be a shift in power unless birth rates increase in the developed world”. Doesn’t this unmask the hidden agenda of Hillary Clinton, the IPPF (International Planned Parenthood) and company? If they cannot increase their countries’ birth rates, they might as well stop or decrease the birth rates of the developing countries to avoid the “shift of power”. That is what Memorandum 200 (Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests) is all about.

Lee Kwan Yew said that “low fertility and an aging population are two of our greatest concerns. In the future we will have to depend on immigrants to make up our numbers, for without them Singapore will face the prospect of a shrinking workforce and a stagnant economy… To encourage marriage and parenthood, Singapore’s government has instituted a wide array of measures: improved accessibility to quality child care, leave entitlements for new mothers and parents of young children, and financial incentives to help defray the costs of raising children. We created a special account for each child in which parents’ savings have been matched, dollar for dollar, by the government, with caps ranging from $6,000 to $18,000, depending on the birth order of the child. This was done to encourage parents to have three or four--or more--children.”

The lesson is that, even if population control will help the economy – something yet to be proven – this progress is temporary. Shall we say 20 years of progress? Then, after that, what? The RH will harm the economy instead of helping it. (4-VIII-2012)