Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

Earlier this year a lot of us received forwarded images of a Ferrari F430 on fire. It was later posted as a video by a guy who’s part of the Ferrari’s convoy:

While seeing a car burn to the ground is shocking enough for most people, a Ferrari F430 is worth a staggering 12 million pesos, sans excise tax, which goes at 100% the car’s value. If you’ve watched the video, you have just seen 24 million pesos burn to the ground.

The reactions when this first came out are varied, mostly to the tune of “sayang yung Ferrari”. Others can’t help but remember this funny Fita biscuit commercial of the “red sports car”:

However when the video initially came out on YouTube there were those who commented that it “serves the car owner right” for being “mayabang” in owning such a luxurious car in a third world country like the Philippines. Others simply say that the owner has “nowhere to put his money” (”walang mapag-lagyan ng pera”) so he wasted it on a Ferrari considering Manila’s potholed roads. Still others lamented the “insensitivity” of the car owner considering there are people in the country who cannot eat three times a day. There are those who assumed that the driver was “showing off”, leading to an engine overheat that caused the fire (apparently the overheat problem is specific to the Ferrari F430 and there have been cases of other F430s burning in several places around the world). Too bad the comments have been deleted by the video owner.

It is not difficult to agree with those who berated the owner of the Ferrari. With poverty staring us Filipinos on the face each and everyday, how can we be so insensitive as to even dare own, much less drive, a 24 million peso car? He should be ashamed of himself for owning such an expensive car, right? But let’s shed our Toyota-driving middle class shoes and put ourselves in the place of the really really poor.

Torn and Frayed, in an entry last year, tells of a friend (who used to blog but put the blog down, unfortunately) whose driver dared ask how much coffee from Starbucks costs:

My part-time driver put me to shame last week. I asked him to drop me off at Starbucks on UN Avenue in Manila. He asked, out of curiosity:

– How much is a coffee at Starbucks?

I tried to remember. I had actually never paid it much attention till now. I answered with my best guess:

– Around, I think, 60 or 65 pesos (US$ 1.25)

He was clearly shocked. He exclaimed aloud and was visibly upset for a moment. We spoke no more about it. We were both embarrassed, he at having so obviously shown surprise and disapproval, I at what I saw as my extravagance in his eyes. Later, I was even more embarrassed when I discovered that my guess for the price was way below the real cost: 80 pesos for a single shot (around USD 1.57). [Torn and Frayed]

It’s very easy for us to sneer at those who can afford what we can’t, and it’s very easy for us to condemn them for “burning” so much money in a country like the Philippines. But I wonder how many of us will be willing to give up our daily 100+ peso Starbucks fix? Or that 300 peso lazy-boy movie at Gateway? Or that 800+ peso dinner at Italianni’s? Or that 1000+ peso monthly out of town at Tagaytay? To the white collar middle class Filipino, these are luxuries that they have earned the right to enjoy because they worked for it, and they worked hard. Nobody has the right to tell them how they should spend the money they earned.

But what about the owner of the Ferrari? Didn’t he work hard for and earn the right to enjoy uber-expensive cars too? Can anybody dictate what kind of car they should drive, and at what cost a car should be deemed us “too expensive” to dare own in this country?

Truth to be told, it all boils down to our attitude towards money. If we see money as a finite resource that’s very hard to come by, like the poor and most of the middle class do, it’s very easy for us to condemn those who can afford to splurge simply because we cannot do what they are doing. What’s worse, some of us will go as far as assuming that it’s very likely that the rich person in question is doing something “bad” and that’s the reason they are earning so much money. Just listen to how the Kilusang Mayo Uno and other leftists condemn business owners as abusers and extortionists, and you’ll realize the attitude the poor has towards the rich.

The bottomline would still be how we view money, and whether we see it as something that is “finite” and “evil”. Besides, money is the root of all evil, isn’t it?

No.

Love of money is the root of all evil?

Wrong again!

Bo Sanchez, in 8 Secrets of the Truly Rich, posits that it’s the lack of money that is the root of all evil. I agree with him. All the negative attitudes we have towards having so much money (at least enough afford a Ferrari) is associated with how finite (and therefore, lacking) money is.

We have no right to question rich people how they spend their money in as much as nobody has the right to question us how we spend our money. But we do have the responsibility to ask ourselves how well we spend our money, and if, after all has been spent and done, we have spent it meaningfully or “burnt” it on overly-expensive espresso fixes.

That’s something you and only you can figure out.