Our country is still full of corrupt leaders and politicians. From the lowest level up to the highest level.
Public health care and education services may vary from places to places. Some places have good services down to the worst ones where politics matters most.
The tax system is not fair. Philippines 97% wealth is by owned by 3% of the population. Our lawmakers, officials and leaders are under the wallet of our tycoons. Our laws are not for us but for the 3%. We have high salary tax and another minimum of 12% additional tax on our goods. Purchasing our first vehicle should not be taxed this high as it is becoming a necessity, instead they should enforce this very high luxury tax the second time (or more) we buy another vehicle.
Taxless society is applicable to nations with very rich resources but with small population. But this is impossible to nations with high population with limited resources.
I think any Democratic type of Government has corrupt officials/politicians. Well, that is because these officials/leaders consider public schools, hospitals, etc. as "business"--
their "business".
I think most of the increase of tax is because of our "past" debts--that issued by the past "few" presidents. Our economy is currently under the influence of Inflation--this is probably their "solution" for paying up these debts.
All in all, I think our country, Philippines, doesn't make good use of its people--for further development in numerous fields: technology, business, etc. A lot of citizens would rather work abroad than here in the Philippines, though I can't really blame them as the exchange rates compare to our PHP is quite significant. Also what I don't like about citizens here is that products that are made locally are not considered as "quality-made-products", they would prefer products from other countries instead. These are just some points, now you would say that it's not that significant but the fact that people here have the mentally like that won't make this country's economy any good. Another thing is, we have so much "imports" than "exports". I can talk about a lot of issues about our country but it's just going to be repetitive, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.
Believe me, the Philippines
have a lot of "resources", people just don't know how to use them, or rather people choose not to use them.
Well.. here in India, we have public schools that give free education, but the quality tends to be very low. In most of the cases, the teachers are not qualified enough and they are not punctual. Education levels are rising, thanks to private institutions. And for college education, some of the government institutions are good. But recently they have increased the tuition fees and now there is not much difference in the fees between government colleges and private colleges.
Another initiative launched by the government is that they are providing free mediclaim up to a certain threshold to the poor people. This means that in case of medical emergency, they can afford to go to the private hospitals rather than the poorly run government hospitals. But even then, this spending represents a small fraction of the government expenses. The majority goes to paying salaries and pension for the government employees.
I apologize, I didn't get into the details about what I said in my last reply--and it turned out to be very positive than expected. Well, I just want to point out the good things about it, rather than its problems. But after reading your statement, I can conclude that our countries situations are pretty similar. Yes, I've said good things about it, but mostly the things that you've mentioned are the flaws of our country as well. Huh, curious, what a coincidence (*cough* capitalism *cough).