Privilege at Play
By: James Davy Tawingan
Tags: Privilege, Poverty, Inequality

Poverty, in its simplest terms, means not being able to provide your necessities such as home, food, and clothing. It also follows by having limited access to basic services like healthcare, education, and security. It is the root cause of many societal problems that are very much prevalent today. Many programs have already been implemented hoping to address this issue, but still it seems that there is no solution to it. The gap between the rich and the poor has just widened more than as ever. As cliché as it sounds, but indeed the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer and I think that it is because of privilege at play.

I saw this post on Facebook one evening before I slept. It was a very simple post, yet it kept me thinking and awake that night. Privilege is one factor that plays a huge role in the success of an individual. Comparing a kid coming from a wealthy family to a kid coming from an impoverished family, the chances of them being successful are immensely split. Moreover, privilege also shows how power and social relations allow people to obtain and hoard resources that help maintain poverty. With this, it would really be difficult to turn your one thousand to one million, challenging to turn your one million to ten million, attainable to turn your ten million to one hundred million, and very easy to turn your one hundred million to one billion. As someone who has knowledge about the stock market, a millionaire can just leave his money in it and it grows on its own without any difficulty. Rich people have the luxury to take risks and being able to fail, unlike poor people whose lives are solely dependent on their financial decisions and circumstances.

I believe that Capitalism just reinforces inequality in the society. It highlights equal playing field among individuals to compete in the market but fails to do so as many people are much more privileged to begin with. Capitalism, in its dark nature, is just a changed form of slavery and feudalism. Big corporations and companies give their workers the least possible while getting the most out of them. They produce surplus and dictate demand, which allows people to blindly follow and live from it. Capitalism treats everyone equally, that’s why people who are already rich just become richer. I have also read that billionaires in the USA can easily get away from taxes legally by creating support foundations and ‘charitable donations’ that hardly support anyone but them. It is true that Globalization has evidently decreased global poverty. The interconnection among countries created opportunities and employment. However, in the heart of Globalization lies the Capitalist system that creates conflict and tension on political, financial, and social aspects of the society.

I am not from a well-off family, but I can say that I am still more privileged than many of the people in my age. I have awarded full scholarship in my Senior High and College in DLSU — Manila, for I have resources like the Internet, own room in our house, knowledge coming from a science high school, working parents and supportive friends, which made my life easier and more comfortable. I acknowledge my privilege, but I also know that not everyone has the equal access to the resources like I have. What more to those people who are rich, right? However, I honestly believe that having privilege is not evil but using your privilege to oppress is.

Inequality in the society has just increased through time and I think that it can be addressed when people start to acknowledge their privilege and use it to create more privileges for others.