My jobs plan if I were the President

Privileged Spits

My jobs plan if I were the President

By BERTENI “TOTO” CATALUÑA CAUSING

If I were the President, how will I create jobs that are more permanent at home for all?

            This question becomes life-and-death if all our overseas Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia are sent home due to the completion of its Saudization, a program aimed at making Saudis educated and skilled enough to do the works being done by millions of Filipinos now there.

I even predict that the domestic workers’ posts would be filled in by KSA natives: our DHs would be displaced too, considering alone the move to ease out hiring of foreign maids.

            Now, it is a fact of life.  There is no magic wand, no school, and no hard and fast rule on how to resolve unemployment.

            So how could I create jobs for the Filipinos in order to employ all who are here and to those who come back because Saudi has stopped the hiring of foreigners?

            To answer this, let us begin from the basic idea.

            First, there is work when Pedro hires Juan to do an activity for Pedro.  Why Pedro hired Juan? The answer is Pedro needs the work of Juan.

            In other words, there is a need to have more persons like Pedro so that more individuals like Juan would be hired.

            But how to have more persons like Pedro?

In all likelihood, Pedro needs the work of Juan because the work must have been necessary to Pedro. It may be a house that Juan is a carpenter.  It may be a pair of shoes that Juan is a shoemaker.  It may be a pair of pants that Juan is a tailor.

Whatever would be that work that led Pedro to hire Juan, two things are certain: Pedro needs it and he has money to pay Juan. 

If Pedro does not need it, he will not hire Juan. If Pedro needs it but Pedro does not have money, he will not hire Juan. 

In other words, these two things must exist to ensure the Pedro hires Juan.

Hence, as a basic principle of my job program, my Presidency will do the best it can to institute programs and projects that will trigger interest in almost all kinds of goods and services so that many will be encouraged to need those goods and services and will hire people to provide those goods and services.

For example, my government may lead in super-massive campaign to entrench in the minds of the citizens why they should buy shoes, clothes, watches, hats, and other gadgets.

My government may maintain massive promotion of the reasons why each citizen must visit at least three places, historical or tour sites, each year to spur employment of people to work at our tourist destinations. 

My government will massively campaign for the citizens to formulate the attitude of not hoarding money in banks but invest it by buying shares of stocks to encourage existing companies to think of expanding and hiring more people.

This campaign is like creating a market event for something that does not exist.  To make what I mean clearer, I am citing what Apple has done. 

Long before the coming of cellular phones, no one needed them.  But manufacturers of cellular phones succeeded in inducing people to like these gadgets. These developed a core of loyal consumers now embracing them as necessities to keep abreast and in touch with friends and loved ones, considering the feeling of happiness engaging another person in exchanges of jokes, exchanges of daily greetings of love and God and others.  Now, because of cellular phone business, millions of people across the Globe are employed.

Then Apple came.

Before it arrived through the genius of Steve Jobs, nobody needed any computer.

But Apple launched a marketing strategy coupled with product durability, efficiency and leadership in being user-friendly. It caused the effect of customers achieving their fantasies by the reach of their fingertips.  

These strategies of Apple has developed a frenzied following among the people of the world to buy iPods, iPads, iPhones, iMac, and Mac Air.  Ironically, these attitudes among the people toward Apple’s products are almost unbelievable to happen: its brands were priced thrice or more of the similar products being sold by other companies yet Apple soared ahead in sales at times when the USA and the rest of the world have been experiencing hard economic times.

For sure, even only addressing the aspect of developing interests in consumers to spend their monies for goods and services to result in hiring other people, and even without yet launching massive programs to empower those who love to buy but do not have sufficient cash in their pockets, my Presidency can reasonably expect that at least 25% of the population have sufficient money to do the buying and they alone can be sufficient to make the transactions move in super-dizzy pace.

Again, when transactions are by the millions a day, these will naturally give birth to separate sets of broad and complex consumer-seller relationships.

Then how should I empower more people to have financial capacities to buy in order to make the buyers’ size ten folds or more?

My presidency will push emergency laws in the Congress directed at encouraging lending to those who want to buy but have nothing in their pockets.

One such law I would propose is to lower the legal limit for borrowing interest rates to 4% per year and set up government lenders to lend with the lowest possible interests in order to attract borrowings from those who want to buy but having insufficient cash sources.

I will also certify to the Congress for a law that will give tax deductions to those private lenders who would risk lending their monies without collateral securities.  As a protection for the borrowers, the law shall require credit limits and that those who would be allowed to take loans should only be those who have sound and stable repayment proposals. 

I would also ask the Congress to pass a law that gives lenders the right that they do not need to go to court to get payments but only to go to the employers and debtors of the lenders and present loan documents for them to get direct deductions from salaries or from these debtors.

These empowered buyers whose population numbers more than the wealthy and the middle class will surely hire people for services and buy goods that in turn require workers to fabricate or make.  Additionally, it will give massive birth to separate sets of broad and complex consumer-seller relationships.

I will also work for the removal or modifications of laws that create natural fears on whether to invest or not among the minds of the moneyed sector.  Many wealthy persons prefer to put their monies in the bank and let it achieve a stagnant growth that can be given by the bank. They have natural resistance to invest because they see also uncertainties on top of fears.

But if tens of thousands more of these potential investors would earn sufficient courage to invest, they will hire people by the millions.

One major headache of businessmen is the minimum wage law that has become so high upon the theory advanced by labor sectors that the bar is high for their basic needs.  So that I will work for the removal of minimum wage law and let the employers and employees set their own terms and wages based on sharing the balance after deducting from the gross sales the cost of raw materials, rentals, utilities and other necessities to produce goods or services.  After determining the balance, the employees get 50% and the employer get 35% while the remaining 15% shall go to the government as income tax.

            I will also work for laws that drastically reduce income taxes from 32% to 15%.  This I do because I recognize the psychological being that any man becomes more honest if he knows that tax to be paid by him would only be much lesser.  So that all taxpayers honestly pay for the cost of taxes is minimal.  Following this line, no one would cheat the taxes to be paid and that would mean more amounts of revenues

I will push in the Congress the lowering of all income taxes to 10% or 15% of the total income of all, be it persons as individuals or corporations or partnerships or sole proprietorships. 

Assuming we have 30 million working individuals and 5 million entities as juridical persons, and assuming the average tax payment for one year for each is P30,000, this will mean a revenue collection of P1.05 trillion.

What may be lost in terms of collections due to the loss in percentage compared to the 32% income tax that we have now will be compensated more by the honesty that makes everybody happy to pay true taxes.

Add to this income of the government are the much bigger sales taxes that can be collected from every sale of goods or services. 

With the spurred economic activities because my Presidency managed to change the mindset of the buyers to become frenzied consumers like those people who queued like snakes in waiting for the opening of Apple stores to buy new Apple products, and doing the same to sellers when acting as buyers for other goods and services, I can expect up to 500 million transactions occurring each day.

If the government earns an average of P5 for every sale, this means that my government earns at least P2.5 billion a day from sales alone. 

If we multiply this by 365 days in a year, my government expects to earn P912.5 billion in one year from sales taxes alone.

A total from the income taxes and sales taxes is about P2 trillion. 

So that sufficient money can go to my government even without expecting an income from Customs duties that run now at P300 billion a year despite widespread dishonesty among its ranks, income from fees charged by offices for licenses and fees, fees charged by the courts and quasi-judicial bodies as docket fees, my administration will not suffer any deficit and to the contrary it will even end up in surplus or excess funds as against the budget of P1.8 trillion that we have now.

Having seen this as sufficient, I will then work for the Congress to abolish capital gains taxes on shares of stocks to encourage more buying and selling of stocks to make stock market exchange lively and full with capital on any given day.  I would also work for the abolition of the 6% capital gains tax on sale of land and other real properties to encourage more selling of lands and discourage the Filipinos from getting too attached to the lands they own. 

I will also work for the establishment of Agriculture Stabilization Fund for the purpose of financing the buying of agricultural products at fair prices to prevent scheming traders from manipulating the buying price of grains, eggs and other animal produce and protect the farmers and producers of farm goods.  I will also work for the establishment of Agriculture Aid to finance those who register to plow and raise animals for our food.  I will also work for the establishment of a solid insurance fund to give funds to farmers if their crops or animals are wiped out by disasters.  These programs will encourage those who are dropouts from schools to see good future in farming and animal husbandry. Of course, I will add with an inspirational message that Bill Gates became the richest in the world although he is a dropout from Harvard University, and that Steve Jobs who invented Macintosh computers, iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iMac is a college dropout. 

 

            With these things I do if I were the President, I can see the beauty even without considering other aspects of possible sources of economic activities.

            Tell me my friend if my jobs formula is doable.