One of the most exhausting parts of navigating an environment like La Salle is the recurring chorus of sheltered entitlement. Whenever a critique of class disparity is raised, it is reflexively met with a defensive shield. I have heard a version quite a few times on campus grounds and across online discourse: “It’s not my fault my dad works hard!”
This thought-terminating cliché is unwittingly cruel. It implies that wealth is a direct, linear result of time and effort—and by extension, that those without wealth simply have not worked hard enough. While often framed as an earnest defense of one’s family, it rests on a fantasy of meritocracy that the rest of the country cannot afford to believe in.
In the Philippines, the reality is far grimmer: the top one percent of earners capture nearly 17 percent of the national income, while the bottom half share a mere 14 percent. When such an extreme wealth gap exists, clinging to this narrative erases the forbidding reality of the Filipino working class—where “hard work” is not a pathway to affluence, but a grueling prerequisite for survival.
That phrase evokes vivid memories of times when I would see my father for a few hours a day as he juggled three jobs, while my mother was often absent from the dinner table, logging overtime at a minimum-wage job that demanded everything from her.
Children of working earners don’t just experience these realities—we witness the ultimate irony. Our parents often exert more physical and emotional labor than those who profit from ownership rather than work itself.
Beyond physical labor, the system also limits the very ability to dream. We often lazily assume the poverty cycle is due to a lack of ambition, unaware that aspirations are a luxury. Aiming high requires a level of mental and financial breathing room that the poor can rarely afford. When your entire day is consumed by the logistics of survival, like calculating jeepney fares and stretching a kilo of rice, there is little room left to chase goals.
To be fair, the elite often believe their own narrative because, within their bubble, hard work is rewarded. When you have the right schools, connections, and even health, effort yields results. They aren’t necessarily lying about their experience; they are just universalizing a privilege that only applies to one percent of the population.
However, this narrative falls apart under national scrutiny. Structural traps ensure that some “hard work” is priced at millions, while others are valued at less than a living wage.
In Metro Manila—even after the 50-peso daily minimum wage hike in July 2025—earning P658 to P695 barely covers the daily cost of living for a family of five, let alone allows for savings. Within the Lasallian bubble, a worker’s entire daily wage is often less than a student’s daily baon.
The cruelty of this ignorance also lies in the misunderstanding of “fallbacks.” Struggle, when cushioned by safety nets, is categorically different from struggle where a single failure is catastrophic. When someone wealthy fails, a trust fund or networks absorb the fall. If a service worker’s “hard work” is interrupted by a single hospital bill, the entire family unit can collapse into debt.
To tell someone who is one layoff away from starvation that they just need to “work harder” isn’t just an insult; it’s a symptom of a class that has never had to choose between a tuition payment and a meal.
While being born into privilege isn’t a sin, using your father’s labor as a silencer for the marginalized isn’t a defense; it’s an admission of ignorance. Meanwhile, naming privilege is not an accusation. It’s the bare minimum of honesty in a system that rewards birth as much as effort.
Until we admit to ourselves that the system is designed to keep the workers at the bottom and the heir at the top, these sheltered comments will remain hollow defenses. After all, it is easy to claim you built the skyscraper when you’ve only ever lived on the top floor, oblivious to the foundations laid by the very people whose labor you end up invalidating.
This article was published in The LaSallian’s March 2026 issue. To read more, visit bit.ly/TLSMar2026.
