The myth of Japan's failure • Hacker News Board

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#61

Post by philwelch » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 7:58 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #59

mbesto wrote: post #6

Let's look at one metric that supersedes all (in my opinion): According to, Japan's unemployment rate has been no higher than 6% over the last 32 years (1980-2012).It's currently at 4.5%[1] Compare that to the US, who's unemployment rate has been at worst 10% over the last 32 years (1980-2012). It's currently at 8.5%[2] Why does this supersede most other stats? Because we simply need to keep people busy "doing things…

> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy. Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US? > What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"? It depends who you ask. If you ask owners of large corporations they will look as GDP for a metric of how great a country is going. Doesn't matter if life expectancy is terrible, infant morta…

>> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy.

> Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US?

Diet, stress, mood, motivation, and physical activity all have impacts on health, and all are affected by employment status. Doctors and medications, while undoubtedly important, aren't the whole picture. Most people are healthier without doctors but with a good diet, a decent amount of physical exercise, and a motivated, happy life than they would be with doctors but without all the other things.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#62

Post by rdtsc » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:08 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #61

rdtsc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy. Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US? > What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"? It depends who you ask. If you ask owners of large corporations they will look as GDP for a metric of how great a country is going. Doesn't matter if life expectancy is terrible, infant morta…

>> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy. > Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US? Diet, stress, mood, motivation, and physical activity all have impacts on health, and all are affected by employment status. Doctors and medications, while undoubtedly important, aren't the whole picture. Most people are healthier without doctors but wit…

But also once someone loses their job, diet, stress, mood & motivation would go down the hill. So the chance of getting sick and needing a doctor would go up, which, interestingly enough is when Americans get denied access to health care.

They eventually end up in emergency care and then declare bankruptcy because of the cost (therefore me using the "dysfunctional" label for it).

But the point was that it is hard to compare the two countries simply on unemployment just because more ties into it. Being unemployed in Japan and breaking a leg is not as terrible as being unemployed in US an breaking a leg. Does it mean Americans are more likely to be stuck working in shitty jobs, afraid to quit and move because they don't want to expose their families to the risk of having no insurance? I don't know. I suspect it plays a role.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#63

Post by dev_jim » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:16 PM UTC

There's a lot to admin about Japan, but this article is hackery at best and deceptive at worst.

The article is almost solely focused on Tokyo. Yes, Tokyo is still doing well. It's still one of the richest cities in the world. But Tokyo cannot be held up as "Japan", just as New York cannot be used as representative of the entire U.S.

Life expectancy in the U.S. has gone up by 4.43 years since 1980. All rich-world countries has seen a similar increase. [1]

Unemployment is lower in Japan because labor force participation rate is (much) lower. The popular is older, far fewer women choose to work, and many men have dropped out of the workforce (a similar phenomenon is happening in the recovery here). [2]

Cell phone supremacy? You mean the iPhone which is designed in California? [3]

He links to Shadowstats which is a conspiracy theorist website about understanding CPI. CPI is one of the most scrutinized measurements out there.

[1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

[2] http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/JPNLFPRNA

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/18/the-iphone-4-tops-handset-s...

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#64

Post by white_devil » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:26 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #28

mbesto wrote: post #6

Let's look at one metric that supersedes all (in my opinion): According to, Japan's unemployment rate has been no higher than 6% over the last 32 years (1980-2012).It's currently at 4.5%[1] Compare that to the US, who's unemployment rate has been at worst 10% over the last 32 years (1980-2012). It's currently at 8.5%[2] Why does this supersede most other stats? Because we simply need to keep people busy "doing things…

It reminds me of my first time visiting South Korea. While there I observed people who's job it was to wear a cute uniform and bow to cars entering the parking garage at the local department store, people hired by companies to stand in the aisles at the local supermarket holding packs of coffee or shampoo or whatever and dance to loud techno music (usually young women in short skirts and thigh high boots, bizarre to…

I've heard of the ridiculously low wages in South-Korea. For example 7-elevens etc are staffed by students doing part-time work for a pittance. It's unfortunate, but what can you do.

In Japan, you'll see retirement-age men working silly pretend-jobs, like guarding a hole in the sidewalk and telling passersby to avoid it, as if the fence wasn't enough.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#65

Post by philwelch » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:30 PM UTC

pinaceae wrote: post #50

DrCatbox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting fallacy. However, you seldom hear anyone criticize work today, all the theories and economieswant people to work more. Why not work less? Why not work at all? How come that all the effeciency and growth still make people work? Isnt the mother of all invention necessity, to not do something mundane and boring while we could be playing and having sex or dancing. Did humans always work since they began calli…

without doing work, you die. if you're alone, quite literally, as you would starve to death. modern man is disconnect from nature and questions work. modern man is also very surprised when nature strikes back. a simple camping trip can suddenly become a life and death situation. we live in a world of massive division of labor. hence questions like yours. money is abstract. so go on try living our there for a while, p…

The Bushmen were some of the last people on earth to live as hunter-gatherers, in largely the same way that all humans did before we fucked everything up with civilization and technology. They lived very communal lives, but they didn't work anywhere close to 40 hours a week, and spent most of the day chatting and making music. They seemed pretty happy until the civilizations around them came in and ruined their culture.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#66

Post by philwelch » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #62

philwelch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy. > Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US? Diet, stress, mood, motivation, and physical activity all have impacts on health, and all are affected by employment status. Doctors and medications, while undoubtedly important, aren't the whole picture. Most people are healthier without doctors but wit…

But also once someone loses their job, diet, stress, mood & motivation would go down the hill. So the chance of getting sick and needing a doctor would go up, which, interestingly enough is when Americans get denied access to health care. They eventually end up in emergency care and then declare bankruptcy because of the cost (therefore me using the "dysfunctional" label for it). But the point was that it is hard to…

I'm just saying that it's one of many factors, and I'm skeptical about overstating its importance because topical political issues are almost always overstated in importance. If we didn't spend a good chunk of the last four years, as a country, angrily arguing about socialized medicine, then socialized medicine would likely not be the first thing to pop in your mind as the most important factor. It's probably just as important that Japanese people eat a healthier diet and are less alienated from their families than Americans, but I wouldn't even claim any certainty there.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#67

Post by gwern » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:41 PM UTC

surrealize wrote: post #25

The overall point of the editorial might be right, but some of the metrics that it mentions are random or problematic. The number of high-rise buildings constructed? That says more about how little buildable land Japan has than it says about the strength of the Japanese economy. The article also mentions electricity "output" (a.k.a. consumption), which has grown faster in Japan than in the US. The article spins it as…

> And some of it is just strange. Michelin ratings as a measure of the strength of an economy? Cultural factors matter as much as economic strength, there.

I was in a theater on the 4th to watch _Nausicaa_, and one of the previews was for a documentary about some sushi chef. Breathlessly it mentioned that he was the first Japanese restaurant to receive 3 Michelin stars.

I was a little astonished. 'Yes, I know 3 Michelin stars is very hard to get, but this must've been in the last 20 or 30 years - how could Michelin have deprived Japan of any 3-star rankings for so long after WWII? Their restaurants are not unusually better these days than they were over the last century or two.'

The obvious answer is that Michelin didn't have any real presence but began ramping up relatively recently (perhaps during the bubble). So it wouldn't be surprising if the coverage continued to increase despite whatever the true trend of Japanese restaurant quality is (up or down).

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#68

Post by guruz » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:45 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #6

Let's look at one metric that supersedes all (in my opinion): According to, Japan's unemployment rate has been no higher than 6% over the last 32 years (1980-2012).It's currently at 4.5%[1] Compare that to the US, who's unemployment rate has been at worst 10% over the last 32 years (1980-2012). It's currently at 8.5%[2] Why does this supersede most other stats? Because we simply need to keep people busy "doing things…

From what you write, I think you might be interested in watching the Zeitgeist movies [1] and read about basic income [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist_(series) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#69

Post by DrCatbox » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:45 PM UTC

pinaceae wrote: post #50

DrCatbox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting fallacy. However, you seldom hear anyone criticize work today, all the theories and economieswant people to work more. Why not work less? Why not work at all? How come that all the effeciency and growth still make people work? Isnt the mother of all invention necessity, to not do something mundane and boring while we could be playing and having sex or dancing. Did humans always work since they began calli…

without doing work, you die. if you're alone, quite literally, as you would starve to death. modern man is disconnect from nature and questions work. modern man is also very surprised when nature strikes back. a simple camping trip can suddenly become a life and death situation. we live in a world of massive division of labor. hence questions like yours. money is abstract. so go on try living our there for a while, p…

People didnt live alone in the woods, so thats a straw man argument there.

Going about it to live together as a commune in the nature, that is success. Just cant be done today, as civilized people would be right there behind and kill them all/take their food/poison them and so on, just as is being done to hunters and gatherer communities who are left today.

People can live together and strive without working, when you consider hunting and foraging/gardening to be a game, and hunting is not considered work even by civilized people, it is something "recreational". Hunting or gathering food is usually done around 2 hours per day at most, depending on season and so on. Its just a fun life, the kind of life humans where made to live. Our bodies are not adapted to working at all. Our bodies and minds break down when working, even in nice office environments without much physical labor.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#70

Post by borism » Sun, Jan 08, 2012, 8:53 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #6

Let's look at one metric that supersedes all (in my opinion): According to, Japan's unemployment rate has been no higher than 6% over the last 32 years (1980-2012).It's currently at 4.5%[1] Compare that to the US, who's unemployment rate has been at worst 10% over the last 32 years (1980-2012). It's currently at 8.5%[2] Why does this supersede most other stats? Because we simply need to keep people busy "doing things…

Especially interesting since Bank of Japan doesn't seem to have dual mandate to guarantee both maximum employment and price stability, unlike Federal Reserve.