1. TRAIN Law is anti-poor, worsening poverty and inequality.

The TRAIN law made provisions on personal individual tax, estate and donor tax, and on
consumption tax. On Personal Individual tax, with the exemption of the minimum wage
earners in paying tax, the government was set to believe that the MWE will take home a
larger pay, and while this is true, the increase on consumption taxes counters this belief.
Consumption tax is levied on consumption of goods and services. Everybody consume
products and services, so whether, you are rich or poor, you consume goods and
services. The government increases personal disposable income which in turn will be
spent on goods and services. With these changes in the consumption tax, the poor is
greatly affected – the poor who is the largest consumers of products and services, the
poor whom is to be levied with the same consumption taxes with the rich, the poor who
is neither deriving income from salary and business. The TRAIN laws objectives are to –
(a) simplify the previous Tax Code; (b) create a more “just” taxation scheme; (c) improve
the efficiency by which tax is collected, particularly on the issue of compliance; and (d)
increases the tax burden felt by the general population thus, increasing the overall
inflation rate. In my opinion, although the tax reform has no direct intention of it being
an anti-poor, but the consequences of it has been affecting the poor greatly that it has
come to a point that it became an anti-poor.

References:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Reform_for_Acceleration_and_Inclusion_Act
 https://steemit.com/philippines/@paulthebeloved/tax-reform-pro-poor-or-anti-poor
2. President Duterte’s ‘Build, Build, build’ program is a ‘Kill, Kill, Kill’ move to our fiscal policies and
socio-economic development.

3. A government franchise grant is a privilege, not a right.