A troubling cycle in the 2025 national budget

Teaching sustainability management this term brought me an unexpected opportunity to examine our national budget crisis through fresh eyes. As my students and I tried to apply systems thinking in analyzing the proposed Philippine national budget, Mr. Kenneth Abante's piercing critique (aptly titled "Stealing our Dignity") helped us have a real-world case study that would shape our classroom discussions about social sustainability.

National budget discussions often feel inaccessible - the numbers are overwhelming, the political dynamics complex, and the technical jargon can make even engaged citizens' eyes glaze over. But something remarkable happened when we began applying systems thinking tools to the detailed information Mr. Abante shared in his analysis. Breaking down these complex relationships through causal loop diagrams made the abstract concrete and the overwhelming manageable.

I divided the class into small groups, each tasked with creating causal loop diagrams to map the relationships between different cause and effect variables. As students traced connections and identified feedback loops, the budget ceased being merely a collection of numbers and revealed itself as an intricate web of social relationships and political dynamics.

One group focused on the PhilHealth situation, where they uncovered a troubling cycle. They mapped how zeroing out PhilHealth's subsidy, combined with the medical assistance program requiring political patronage, creates a reinforcing loop of dependency. Their brainstormed diagram showed how short-term fiscal decisions could unravel decades of progress toward universal healthcare, while strengthening political patronage systems.

The education budget cuts dominated our class discussions, with most groups focusing their systems analysis on this critical issue. Their causal loop diagrams revealed how slashing billions from the Department of Education's budget creates devastating ripple effects through generations. Their diagrams traced how reduced educational investment today not only compounds existing learning gaps but further widens the divide between privileged and underprivileged students, creating an increasingly unequal society – a sad example of a vicious cycle or a reinforcing feedback loop.

The students' most striking insight came when they connected these separate analyses. They saw how education cuts and healthcare access restrictions form a larger pattern of systematic dignity reduction. Students painfully echoed how health and education issues are seemingly weaponized as patronage political mechanisms.

What began as an academic exercise in social sustainability and systems thinking evolved into a deeper reflection. Through the students applying causal loop analyses, they grasped how budget decisions that might seem fiscally prudent in isolation can combine to erode social foundations. They understood that true sustainability requires maintaining not just financial or environmental capital, but also social capital - including human dignity.

This classroom experience, albeit just an introductory lesson, reinforced my belief in systems thinking's power to illuminate social sustainability challenges. When we map connections and identify feedback loops, we see beyond immediate causes and effects to understand how systems either support or undermine human dignity over time.

My students' journey from unawareness to engagement offers hope. National budget discussions are not mere abstract fiscal exercises anymore. There are crucial decisions about what kind of society we wish to sustain. My students’ evolving perspective reminds us that addressing sustainability challenges requires more than technical solutions - it demands understanding how our choices ripple through social systems, affecting both present dignity and future possibilities.

As we continue national debates about budget priorities, perhaps we should take a cue from these students. By applying systems thinking to examine how our choices affect social sustainability, we might make decisions that better preserve both our resources and our dignity as citizens. The budget, after all, is not just a financial document - it's a statement about what we value as a country and what kind of future we wish to sustain.