| Photo by Ilihima Abitama on Unsplash
Part X of a “Cancer/Medical Moonshot” Series
“Value Added Taxes” (VAT) can begin real, and affordable, healthcare and end “Kangkong Socioeconomics”. But readers have to understand what “kangkong” is first. This column has discussed a “socioeconomic state (that) is composed of three groups: the Filthy Rich Cronies, the Working Middle Class, and the Poorest-of-the-Poor. For want of a better term, this writer calls it the ‘Kangkong Socioeconomics’. Like the kangkong (or water spinach), people are divided into three parts, just like the plant: Arrow-shaped leaves at the top (the Filthy-Rich Cronies or “FRC”), the tender but hollow stems (the Working Middle Class or “WMC”), and underwater roots (the Poorest-of-the-Poor Consumers or “PPC”).
Read more about “A Trifurcated ‘Kangkong Socioeconomics’ and Not a Bifurcated Economy,” which was published on November 9, 2025.
The “PPCs” (composed of the marginalized people like the homeless, the jobless, the addicts, and those suffering from a deadly disease like cancer, and retired people living on social-security pensions) are the folks “below the water.” It is an economic term that means the same as “underwater” or “underwater mortgage,” referring to a financial situation in which an asset, such as a home or stock, is worth less than the debt owed on it. It is commonly used in real estate to mean a borrower owes more on their mortgage than the property’s current market value.
But in real life, the “PPCs” are like the roots of the kangkong that float with the plant and are unattached to the soil. They are at the mercy of the elements, the environment, the political lords and their cronies, organized as cartels, syndicates, and monopolies. And criminal organizations like drug lords, warlords, landlords, etcetera, ad infinitum.
As discussed last in Part IX of this series, if the Philippines and other poor countries can force their respective government to devote 100% of the VAT collections every year to invest in a national cooperative of federation of provincial healthcare co-ops and agricultural-based labor cooperatives of farmers, fishermen, retailers and operators of “Memorial Tree Parks”, poverty can be eliminated in two-to-three decades or even in fewer years.
In subsequent parts of this series, discussions that have been written about how Filipino farmers will be mentioned, such as how farmers could produce high-value products like cacao, coffee, tea, seaweed, and other marine products if they were organized as co-ops. Yes, cooperatives, properly funded by stakeholders, including Filipinos, Overseas Filipinos, and their foreign friends and in-laws. Plus capital from VAT, as government equity in said ventures.
“Suppose the Vatican joins the “Cancer/Medical Moonshot” proposal as one of its prime movers, the greater the chances that it would be launched sooner and succeed faster.”
More than 175 countries worldwide, including nearly all members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) except the United States, impose a value-added tax (VAT) or a similar goods-and-services tax (GST) on consumption. This widespread adoption makes it a primary source of government revenue globally, covering over 170 to 175 countries and jurisdictions.
Gun violence among civilians, medical and social cancers, other diseases, and pandemics cause more deaths per year than civil wars on all the continents. It has been advanced by some statisticians that all forms of cancer alone caused more deaths in the past two decades than those civilians and soldiers who died in World Wars I and II. The medical versions of cancer result annually in fatalities globally that exceed 10 million individuals, at a minimum. And added to the total are tens of millions more cancer survivors who affect the economic survival of their closest kin and in-laws.
After Cardinal Robert F. Prevost was elected the first pope of American descent and the first Augustinian missionary to head the Vatican, this column started a series addressed to His Holiness. It was called “Fourteen Letters to Pope Leo XIV”. The first letter was about the Vatican’s efforts to end violence and homelessness in the Philippines.
After all, Augustinian missionaries were the first to begin, in 1565, the conversion of the native people of what became the Philippines to Christianity. After more than 330 years as a Spanish colony, it became the only predominantly Catholic country in the Far East. Then Cardinal Prevost, as the head of the Order of Saint Augustine, visited the Augustinian Province of Cebu (Philippines) on numerous occasions.
Suppose the Vatican joins the “Cancer/Medical Moonshot” proposal as one of its prime movers, the greater the chances that it would be launched sooner and succeed faster. The Vatican is the headquarters of the world’s largest Christian Church, with more than 225,000 parishes and hundreds of Catholic universities with medical centers, cancer institutes, or wards, and other scientific research and concerns.
Will the day come soon when Vatican chefs start serving Caesar’s salad with olives and kangkong leaves?
