Pros and Cons of Salary Increase
Josh Fishy - 11/10/2015

All permanent and regular government employees in the Philippines are going to get the raise they have been wishing for from the Aquino administration.

According to the news, Pnoy endorsed to Congress a proposed bill entitled "Salary Standardization Law of 2015" for consideration and enactment into law.

This is good news especially to teachers who make do with their measly monthly pay. But whether we like it or not, higher salary comes with some stumbling blocks.

Let's start with the comforts workers will earn when their salary increases.

With additional several hundreds of pesos every payday, one can buy something he couldn't afford a couple of weeks ago. So, taking your family or loved one out for a dinner even once a month is no longer like a castle built in the air.

Saving for a rainy day would not hurt one's wallet. That is, a hardworking person usually puts a few hundreds of pesos aside, but at times letting your day to day needs and expenses suffer. With the raise you received, your mind would be at ease knowing that you have extra money in hand.

Working eight hours a day for five days a week could stress one out, but earning good money would make your hardship worthwhile. This is true to teachers who could hardly make both ends meet with their salary, yet burned out even after a day's work.

If the increase is big enough, that could afford you to apply for an additional loan. Government agencies have put a ceiling on the minimum take home pay, but one could bear the expense of adding another loan if the raise is more than enough to have one.

These are just some of the benefits one can get if there is a wage hike. However, advantages and disadvantages are intertwined which seem like one could not exist without the other.

So, we got the downside of salary increase.

No doubt, prices of basic commodities will soar. Given that a lot of people could buy more at the same time, demands go up and so with price of supplies. And for sure, ordinary laborers and minimum wage earners will suffer the most.

Tax rate is going to swell to recover the decrease of the total revenue in a year due to wage hike. And so the growth of your salary is not actually the exact worth you can get.

Your daily expenses are likely to skyrocket. It is probably because of the thought that you have more capacity to buy that things you restricted yourself in obtaining before. There is a Filipino saying that goes "Pag malaki ang butones, malaki din ang ojales." Which translates in English: If the button is big, so is the eyelet.