THE Milton Friedman lites in the economic team of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. were probably stricken with early morning constipation after learning of the radical upending of economic policies in the European Union, you know, with Brussels, a solid and impregnable bastion of neoliberalism, abruptly turning around. Same with the Hayek zealots that make up the leadership of the dubious local think-tanks masquerading as apostles of “economic freedom” and who loathe anything and everything that deviate from free markets and vehemently hate any and all policies that serve the interests of the common man. Which leads us to the inevitable question. Aren’t they (the economic ministers of Mr. Marcos Jr. and the free market think-tankers) one and the same thing?

The nearest answer to that question is, “What quacks like a duck...”

The free market zealots — and this is to their credit — are unrelenting and rigid and incapable of flexibility. The latest statement from the “economic freedom” groups that probably triggered early morning amusement at the offices of Ibon, the research group with a nationalist bent, was the proposal to open up the rice and corn agri subsectors to “foreign ownership.” I am not a small farmer making this up, it is eminently true. The think-tankers really want to open up rice and corn farms to “foreign ownership” just like the other sectors still protected by the equity provisions in our Constitution.

OK, what are these developments in the EU that caused early morning constipation among the free market zealots in the Cabinet of Mr. Marcos Jr. and the think-tankers? This is the gist of it. With the EU member nations faced with soaring electricity costs and inflation-induced hardships, the usual decision to call for austerity amid the challenging and tough times is out. The unanimous response is massive and costly intervention, the casting away of orthodox solutions, neoliberalism be damned. (Remember, just a few years ago, the EU did not lift a hand to save bankrupt Greece and insisted on austerity measures.) The specifics of the interventionist policies are these:

– Taxes on the excess profits of energy companies (this means temporarily jettisoning the usual tax cuts)

– Subsidies to electricity consumers, subsidies to small businesses, subsidies to small and vulnerable businesses – Price caps on electricity costs – Cash handouts to consumers. Is the most dreaded word, “nationalization” on the table? It is, though the details on this are not yet clear. But this means setting aside the favored policy of the FriedmanHayek types — privatization and more privatization until government is reduced to peanut crumbs.

Even Liz Truss, the new prime minister of Britain legendary for her shapeshifting, has temporarily suspended her commitment to tax cuts and free market policies and committed to the opposite of what she pledged to do, which is to impose price caps on electricity costs and support electricity consumers, from households to small businesses. We will ride out this storm, said Truss, momentarily putting her neoliberal commitments under lock and key.

With this turnaround in the EU and ex-EU member Britain, it is now hard to find a nation in any democracy, in any part of the globe, that is still married devoutly to free market/ austerity policies like the Philippines. The Philippines is right now the only democracy in the world that is stuck with economic orthodoxy, the full menu of what was on the “Washington Consensus.” The EU, led by Germany, used to be a reliable exemplar of free markets, privatization, deregulation and austerity. We can still recall its tough call on the Greece bankruptcy — austerity instead of generous bailouts. Today, the level of suffering within the Union called for interventionist measures of the unprecedented kind.

With the radical upending of EU’s free market zealotry, and the Trumpian dedication to the same tenets gone with Trump, the Philippines is right now the only country cutting on cash subsidies and aid to the most vulnerable sectors and seemingly proud of it. It is perhaps the only nation dedicated to reining in the almost P13 trillion debt through a series of misplaced belttightening measures. It is the only nation with the intent to sell off some crown jewels to privatization to raise much-needed revenues. It is perhaps the only country deeply and fully committed to investment attraction even if that comes with selling out the constitutional provisions on equity ownership.

A routine scrutiny of the budget measures will send one into fits of depression. The decision to lop off funds from the already fund-starved University of the Philippines and the UP-Philippine General Hospital, two of the most critical state institutions for education and health, provide the glaring proof of the depravity of the budgetary thrusts and directions. The 2023 budget does not even have money for Covid vaccine purchases. The fund to combat cancer has been slashed.

A congressman said that there is almost no money for building libraries. And the context of this deprivation is the verdict from the World Bank and the United Nations. Our 10-year-olds and 15-year-olds can hardly do simple math problems and can hardly read and comprehend the written word. The curse called “poverty learning” is most severe in the Philippines and often one suspects that this is by design on the part of the political and economic elite. They want a critical mass of barely educated proles that will both do slave work and vote unwisely.

To starve the critical subsectors of education and health of much-needed funds is only done in banana republics.

Where will all those fixations and endless love affairs with neoliberalism take us?

That was the policy in 2021, and this year is no different. It will hold for 2023 as well. Starve the basic and most critical sectors that concern the human capital. Focus on Build, Build, Build. Focus on investment attraction. Focus on tax cuts.

The year 2021 recorded a historic high, not in human progress but human deaths. That year, according to PSA data, a total of 879,429 people died.

And probably, according to reports from global mortality data, the record number of deaths was under-counted and no one noticed because we are a nation that can’t even count accurately.