WI the Philippines' economy does not decline under the Marcos regime?

At Filipino news site Rappler, JC Punongbayan and Manuel Leonard Albis argue in their "Were it not for Marcos, Filipinos today would have been richer" that the Marcos regime had a lasting and very negative effect on the development of the Filipino economy.

Although imperfect, GDP per capita is widely recognized as a useful proxy for measuring people’s welfare: The larger people’s incomes are, the more goods and services they can purchase and the freer they are in making choices for their own lives.

It bears repeating that, based on this metric, the Philippines lost two decades of development after the debt crisis in the early 1980s. Figure 1 shows that the Marcosian debt crisis put the country on a lower income trajectory. As a result, it took more than two decades for the average Filipino’s income to recover its 1982 level.

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Importantly, no such downturn was observed in our ASEAN neighbors. In fact, their incomes grew by 2 to 4 times during the time it took us to just recover. This suggests that the Philippines’ “lost decades of development” were not unavoidable and were borne directly by Marcos’ policies.


Their graphs are impressive, and the consequences were severe. Had the Philippines not dropped behind its neighbours but instead kept its relative position, it might be the richest large country of Southeast Asia, on the verge of First World status even. Instead, the Filipino economy went into first a pronounced relative decline, then after the early 1980s a pronounced absolute decline that took more than two decades to recover from.

Was the Marcos regime or something like it inevitable, or was it something that could have been avoided? What could a rich Philippines look like?
 
As I understand it, Marcos ruled from 1965 to 1986. What happened between 1982 and 1986 for that wholesale decline? I've read of Marcos corruption and crony capitalism. But what took place?
 
The economy started to fall in Marcos' 2nd term.

There's this misconception that the Philippines is very prosperous before the Martial Law era. The reality is, it's mostly due to the massive American aid.

As I understand it, Marcos ruled from 1965 to 1986. What happened between 1982 and 1986 for that wholesale decline? I've read of Marcos corruption and crony capitalism. But what took place?

It's crony capitalism. Marcos meddled too much with the local industries, putting his friends in charge of them. Almost none of them are competent enough.

There's also the fuck tons of money he plundered.
 
As I understand it, Marcos ruled from 1965 to 1986. What happened between 1982 and 1986 for that wholesale decline? I've read of Marcos corruption and crony capitalism. But what took place?
My pet theory is that things came to a head when Marcos proclaimed (after pressure from the Vatican, who were not pleased that an ostensible bulwark against Communism was murdering priests and nuns, naturally) the theoretical end to Martial Law. A lot of foreign investors started to balk when the nominal return to civilian rule did not mean an end to the repression, never mind the local business community. Marcos had always sold martial law to the public as to 1) get rid of the Communist threat and 2) to restructure society to foster rapid development and make it more "disciplined". When his version of civilian rule showed that the deprivations of Martial Law weren't just growing pains, but galvanized into the new Fourth Republic's system, they refused to invest - why lay down money to start a factory when there's always a risk of it being "nationalized" (really just given to some KBL crony) and your workers shot for some reason or another?
 
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