We can’t deny the fact that the Philippines really has a poor economic performance.

And because of this

the Philippines is facing many problems; including poverty, poor nutrition, poor quality of education and
many more. These problems are still not solved and are slowly increasing as time passes by, especially
when we faced a pandemic last year.

Based on the article “The Philippine Economic History” by Robert Nelson, he clearly wants to emphasize
the problem of economic situation in the Philippines in order to understand its poor economic
performance. To be straightforward, the puzzle here is about how the Philippines which is known as the
richest country in the world, became so poor. Robert Nelson claimed that economists shouldn’t let it slip
or they should not set aside the unobserved economic variables of the Philippines, such as culture,
religion and politics in order to solve or to address the economic mysteries of the said country.
According to him, the political and economic performance of the Philippines stands closer to Latin
America than to Southeast Asia, and it is embedded in their huge similarity of common Spanish Catholic
colonial history and culture that barred freer markets and successful political democracy.

The article mentioned that there are many reasons to be concerned about the poor economic situation
in the Philippines, Corruption, difficult geography, microeconomic failures are still insufficient reasons to
help relieve Filipinos of their dissatisfaction with the concurrent Philippines economic and political
structure of the Philippines. On other hand, what Robert Nelson is trying to say is that the Philippines is
so much better off being an American state that being independent. He is also saying that the
Philippines is economically able under Abe’s direct watch and maneuvers.