Would you agree that Philippines appears the most impoverished and slum-ridden in Asia? (2013, judgment)
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I was reviewing (in google earth) all the countries in Asia in their overall economic situation and after going over even countries with lower wages like Myanmar, Vietnam ect, I noticed that Philippines is the only country in the whole region of Asia littered with a sea of slums and dirt and overall bad looking appearance. Does that really happen to be the case?
I thought Vietnam was poorer and Myanmar too, but I looked at the cities and was impressed by how well layed out, clean and free of slums they were. In stark contrast to the sea of slums all over downtown Manila and surrounding the city as well, the other countries don't seem to have a single slum in them!
All cities in the Phils also seem to have the same mess of dirty looking slums.
My thoughts on the reasoning behind this are that it has a huge population problem, natural disaster problem, is plagued by Muslim related violence and is seemingly off the RADAR for almost all kinds of investors.
One has to be mentally and financially impoverished to use Google Earth to make such rash judgments.
As you think you are not financially impoverished go visit.
I've been all through The Philippines is probably average for most Asian Countries outside of Japan, China and South Korea. . Bangladesh is way poorer and so are parts of India and Pakistan. Cambodia is also poorer than the Philippines. By the way have you ever heard of North Korea?? Hmm must be those Muslims who made that country poor. Countries Classified by Income Group | Global Finance
The Philippines has a stock market since 1927 and it hit a record high a year or two back ( probalbly has broken that since).
Learn how to do real research so you won't embarrass yourself in the future.
No Philippines is not the most improvised. If we are referring to all Asian countries; then its North Korea and Afghanistan. But if we are referring to countries without special circumstances as the two aforementioned, then its Nepal followed by Bangladesh.
While the PRC happily states that its people living below the poverty line of less than $1.25 per day, have dropped to just over 6% of their population, the real numbers in rural China is about 100 million people. Compounding the problem of these people's low incomes, is the fact that public money for school and medical facilities, is focused on urban areas. You therefore have people living in poverty, isolated from the opportunities in the cities, with literally no way out.
Definitely not the Philippines... unsure how you came to that conclusion. I would think India has a higher income discrepancy than China, and also those slums. That is something I cannot fathom living in.
Definitely not the Philippines... unsure how you came to that conclusion. I would think India has a higher income discrepancy than China, and also those slums. That is something I cannot fathom living in.
Wow, sadly you are right about India. Over 300 million below poverty line.
it is true that you can can a good idea of how it is doing my looking at satellite imagery. Anyone that looks at toronto or Singapore can see quite well how it 'looks' rich. the well planned and buiilt houses, the many breat buildings, the green belts, the roads. You can also see when a country is more in the middle like say a place in Chile or Brazil or China or South Africa. It does not look like super rich houses in all neighborhoods in Canada, but the whole cities are built up and slums are not as obvious to pick out on satellite. In Manila if you go on Google Earth, you notice a huge number of houses built in shantytown way like in Tondo, Navotas,, Caloocan City North and South, Malabon and many others. You can't miss it at all. But what surprised me was how when you look at the other countries in SE Asia and they are less severe, in Hanoi vietnam, you don't see the types of slums like Manila. They are more like a dense neighborhood of cheap multistory buildings, while Manila's has a lot of the ones that are literally tin shacks made out of scrap. All you have to do is a google image search and you will see that I am right. The same better image is present in Cambodia. You look and see no shantytowns. The poorest houses are lined along streets like the richer ones. Myanmar, which has a bigger population is just as well laid out. I am not criticizing Philippines, but simply wondering, why so many slums there, despite it being true that Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam are poorer than them. It doesn't make sense.
The Philippines suffers as any island nation does, but it isn't the worst in Asia, and certainly not the best. In many less developed countries there are relatively few wealthy, and many who are incredibly poor. It's tough to evaluate average quality of life looking at gross GDP numbers imo.
Surprisingly, I couldn't even find any photos anywhere in image search of Vietnam slums, but there were lots from Manila:
I couldn't find any images of Yangon, Myanmar slums either, because as I had figured, they don't actually have them, neither does Cambodia. This is why I wondered why it is a Manila thing. South Asia has a lot of it, but in SE Asia, Manila is the only one that seems to be like that.
The Philippines suffers as any island nation does, but it isn't the worst in Asia, and certainly not the best. In many less developed countries there are relatively few wealthy, and many who are incredibly poor. It's tough to evaluate average quality of life looking at gross GDP numbers imo.
Very true. Because again, GDP per capita is higher in the Phils than a lot of the other ones in the region, but for some reason, even with that being true, there is a much higher population in Manila with little to no money and the city is littered with slums from near the centre to all around it.
I think it has to do with a severe inequallity issue, even as the country enjoys rising revenues. Phils seems to only invest in industries that either don't make workers rich at all like in agriculture, or whose foundation is in low wages like the outsourcing. Philippines seems to be growing mostly on outsourcing work which is great, but only one problem, its foundation is that wages must be low to compete, which must mean the Phils aims to remain a low income nation for most workers to boom in that business. Phils is very anti-manufacturing and has astronomical power issues that need to be fixed, but are far from that.
Almost every thing I read about manufacturing investments looks right over Phils to all other countries. For high tech manufacturing, they go to all the countries that are already well developed, or limit themselves to Vietnam, thailand or Indonesia. For cheap labour they STILL miss the Phils and skip right over to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and a host of countries outside the region like the americas. So all these jobs that are supposed to be in manufacturing show no sign of coming to the Phils.
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