COULD a banquet of chicken, beef and rice be the solution to the trade tensions between China and the US.?

THERE’s an old theory that as an organism develops, it progresses through the same evolutionary stages traveled by its ancestors. Traditionally, economic development has worked in a similar way. When a country first shifts from agrarian poverty to industrialization, it tends to start out in light manufacturing, especially textiles. Later it masters more complex manufactured products, and finally it progresses to inventing its own cutting-edge technology. Thus, each country’s development tends to look a bit that of nations that already went through the process.

Competitive neutrality (CN) aims to provide a level playing field between public and private firms. State corporations competing in a market may be accorded many types of support on their operations not available to private firms such as tax and tariff exemptions, debt guarantees, exemptions from procedural requirements, exclusive purchase privileges, access to lower or subsidized interest rates, etc. These non-neutral policies distort the market and attenuate market gains. When extended to provide a level-playing field for all market players regardless of ownership in the same industry, we call it “Competitive Neutrality +” (CN+). The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is committed to pursue efficiency and thus CN in the market. We begin by making a distinction between de jure and de facto neutrality. A rule or law may be de jure neutral but may be de facto non-neutral, that is, enforced in a non-neutral manner by the biased enforcement of the law. We start with the proposed non-exclusive franchise for Solar Philippines.

Most anti-coal activists would resort to disinformation and deception to advance their ecological leftist agenda and in the process, deprive energy consumers of the opportunity to have cheaper, stable and reliable 24/7 electricity, badly needed to sustain fast growth and generate more jobs for the people.

Growing old, we like to meet old friends. We “junior senior citizens” (a term coined by Nenette, a college friend of my late wife Mae) enjoy the luxury of time to get together for coffee or dinner. But in the case of Fides (our friendship dating back to almost half a century ago), we had our last couple of appointments at the Manila regional trial court.

TODAY, February 22, is the first of the four days of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. The Revolution against the Marcoses officially ended on February 25, when Corazon Cojuangco Aquino took her oath as President of the Republic. Her oath of office was administered by Supreme Court Justice Claudio Teehankee at what is now called appropriately the Kalayaan (Freedom) Hall of Club Filipino in San Juan.

ASKED if he caused the February 13 arrest of Rappler CEO and editor Maria Ressa, President Rodrigo Duterte said he had nothing to do with it, and that he did not “relish picking on her.” He also said he did not know Wilfredo Keng, whose complaint that he had been libeled by the online news site led to the Ressa arrest.

PROBABLY it’s intersectionality. Or identity politics. Or the glorification of victimhood. Whatever the cause, everyone nowadays seems to demand preferential treatment. Of course, it’s never stated that way. Usually, it’s called as a plea for “rights.”

POLIOMYELITIS, more commonly known as polio, is a highly infectious viral disease, which mainly affects young children. It is a crippling and potentially deadly disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

MODERN day socialists and populists in governments, explicit and implicit, are aware of the limits of governments giving all sorts of endless, no timetable subsidies, discounts and other welfarist programs. So they invented a new form of welfarism — forcing private corporations to give mandatory discounts (restaurant food, medicines, fare in public transportation, etc.) to people, rich and poor no distinction. Politicians and governments get the credit while corporations get the financial burden as those forced discounts cannot be used for tax deduction.

The average annual pay of a chief executive officer (CEO) in the Philippines is Php 2,200,000. This is in stark contrast to the annual income of around Php 169,000 that a minimum wage earner in Metro Manila lives on. Globally, companies with the largest CEO-worker pay gaps include Disney at 367:1 and 21st Century Fox at 311:1. On a more positive light, new data reveal that 20 companies with the lowest CEO-worker pay gaps include Facebook (CEO: Mark Zuckerberg) at 37:1 and, topping the list, Berkshire Hathaway (CEO: Warren Buffett) at 2:1.

On a visit to Singapore about 15 years ago, I had the chance to meet a number of key government officials, including senior people from Singapore’s public housing authority, the Housing Development Board (HDB). Many of the public condominium units in Singapore now were built and are currently managed by HDB.