MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza We are the working class who enjoy a paying job and the ability to pay income taxes while affording rent, meals, fuel, and such luxuries as an annual vacation or a car acquired on installment. Our salaries support ourselves, while our taxes pay for the jobless, income-less who qualify for subsidies, “ayuda” and perks so perkily handed out by local and national government officials. In hard times like the present, why does the middle class feel like a beast of burden? You have to be in the middle of nowhere to realize that you’re on your own. The affluent have their wealth, CPA’s and lawyers to make life easier for them. The poor have DSWD, city hall, and public officials elected by the people looking after their welfare. Who will look after the middle class? Their savings have lost some of their peso value, with inflation hitting 7.9 percent and prices of food and fuel reaching unpredictable highs (₱50 for three tomatoes, ₱70 for one mango, ₱67 for a liter of gasoline). Should those of the middling class be suddenly blessed by an out-of-the-box pay increase during belt-tightening times, will the difference be enough to gladden their growing families? Growing means additional members, additional appetites and expenses, and as Parkinson’s Law so cheekily warns, expenditures grow to meet rising income. If the middle class or classes – upper middle, middle, lower middle, hm? – don’t watch where their money goes, such as vices, a high-maintenance mistress, an acquired taste for luxuries to match their neighbors’, they could drop several notches to peril and perdition. The daily minimum wage of ₱500 is no longer enough – an additional ₱100 has been recommended, but is it realistic? – and until NEDA tells us how much the middle class is worth, do we have a yardstick to measure their earning capacity? President Marcos said he has faith in the economy being propped by a growing, prosperous middle class, but there have been no kneejerk reactions from NEDA to estimate what prosperous means and where middle stands. According to Ibon Foundation, a family of five needs ₱1,119 daily to survive; this is survival class, not middle. Take a tip from not-middle-class Senator Cynthia Villar: “I want a simple life.”