---oooOOooo---
When you see the many middle-class villages in Metro Manila, what seems to me the most striking about them is how the homes in them represent a dead end. These villages and the homes in them were built by the generation of Filipino professionals who worked from the 1950s to the 1970s, and who, by their own hard work, were able to secure every family's dream: a home, some land, education for the children and retirement benefits after decades of working for a firm. The success of these generations may be measured by their ability to keep their children afloat, the kids born in the 1960s to the 1970s up to the early 1980s, who, even if they try their hardest, can never build the sort of life their parents did.
The perennial complaint of people my age is that it is virtually impossible on a salary to buy a car, get a mortgage to buy an apartment or a small house, and generally achieve the things their parents did. Increasingly those who can, juggle jobs to increase their paychecks.---oooOOooo---
This just struck me because it was so true. One of my dreams is to own a condo unit, but that is something I cannot comfortably buy. Am I a failure then? I live a comfortable life, but only because I live with my parents in a house they bought almost 30 years ago. I drive a car, but it is my parent's car, bought with money they made. Unless I don't eat and don't spend a cent on anything else, i cannot possibly buy a car or a house.
Do I have to work two jobs then, just to fulfill that dream? Work harder? Be smarter? Work abroad? Migrate? Leave? Or is entrepreneurship the answer?
*full column can be read at the Philippine Daily Inquirer's website: http://beta.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=3175&col=111
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment