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The myth of Japan's failure

nytimes.com

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Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#71

Post by learc83 »

philwelch wrote: post #65
pinaceae wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cultu…

That's also completely controlled by where you live. There are a few places on Earth naturally abundant enough(and with climate friendly enough) to support a population with less than 40 hours per week per person, but I'd bet most of the planet doesn't fall into that category.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#72

Post by tsotha »

rayiner wrote: post #55
abracat1 wrote: post #30

It is easy and popular for westerners to romantacize Japan - but it has serious and structural problems. When analyzed on its own (instead of comparing it to the USA) it becomes readily apparent. I will just say a few observations which show that the picture the article paints is not quite accurate. Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live…

> Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live with their parents - and their whole income is expendible. I don't know if this phenomeneon started after the bubble economy, but it is quite shocking. Living in larger family units is actually very efficient. The way we do things here in the U.S. is actually shockingly inefficient. Parents buy big…

>Living in larger family units is actually very efficient.

Maybe so, but it's not a sign of excess wealth. Japanese young people live with their parents longer than was customary thirty years ago, so it's not a question of culture. They simply can't afford to move out.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#73

Post by learc83 »

gwern wrote: post #67
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 Miche…

From what I've been able to find, it looks like Michelin didn't review Japan at all until around 2007-2008.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#74

Post by tsotha »

Japan has the highest debt/GDP ratio in the world. It's true most of that money was lent by Japanese people, but as the population gets older people will start draw down their savings. The government will be forced to go to international markets to service the debt, and then the wheels are going to come off. If they had to roll over that massive debt at 3% interest service on the debt would consume the entire budget.

They'll have to impoverish the savers through inflation of the yen, assuming that's a political possibility. Is this the sign of a healthy economy?

The "lost decades" are not a myth. Japan has been able to preserve the appearance of wealth by borrowing it. Of course the country has great infrastructure. It was all built on borrowed yen in a futile attempt to stimulate growth. But the bill is coming due.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#75

Post by borism »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #46
aycangulez wrote: post #27

I have been following Fingleton, the author of this article for quite a while. His main thesis that "Japan's lost decade is an illusion" has not changed much over the years. In fact, he was among the group "Japan bashers" in the 90s, and their main argument was that Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF) was intentionally trying to paint a grim image of Japan to gain advantage in trade negotiations. This argument holds li…

This argument holds little water these days: it is next to impossible to hide information about the true state of a country when access to information is so easy thanks to the Internet. It's actually quite easy: Step 1: recognize that gathering macroeconomic statistics is really hard. One example: if people previously spent $3 on salsa, but now they spend $5 on guacamole, what is the inflation rate for mexican dips?…

except salsa and guacamole are interchangeable.

it doesn't seem to me you can easily exchange one component of CPI with another?

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#76

Post by learc83 »

abracat1 wrote: post #53
nandemo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's quite a bit of disinformation in your comment. * that people live with their parents is only "shocking" if you happen to come from a country where that is considered taboo. In many countries it's not considered shameful to live with your parents while you're single. It didn't start after the bubble, it started like 1000 years ago. Yeah, there's a downside to it, but then there's also a downside to getting int…

> In many countries it's not considered shameful to live with your parents while you're single. I can completely understand that you want to live with your parents when you are studing (or a young working adult). But 28years+ is becoming a bit ridiculous. Maybe it is because a lot of people are not getting married anymore. But the point is that many people (and some of my friends) can not afford a really expensive ap…

I'm with on most of that, but what do you mean by "FAtkins" diet?

Severe carbohydrate restriction may be to difficult for most people to stick with, and therefore not optimal for keeping the weight off. But there is is irrefutable evidence that carbohydrate restriction will result in weight loss.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#77

Post by Cushman »

learc83 wrote: post #71
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cultu…

That's also completely controlled by where you live. There are a few places on Earth naturally abundant enough(and with climate friendly enough) to support a population with less than 40 hours per week per person, but I'd bet most of the planet doesn't fall into that category.

We can do it more or less anywhere, it's just a question of population density. A tribe that needs a few hundred square miles of tundra could live as well off of a few dozen acres of tropical forest.

Here's a bit of trivia for you-- the most "abundant" place on the planet, the place once home to the highest density of exclusively foraging peoples, is the area now known as Northern California.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#78

Post by mahyarm »

DrCatbox wrote: post #39
OstiaAntica wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have fallen for the fallacy that there's a fixed amount of "work" in the economy. That's been disproven time and again, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy Rather, employment is a dynamic pie that can grow as more people add skills and put those skills to work.

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…

The reason why they want employees to work more is because they have skills and experience related to their job and they'll get more productive work done if you just get them to work 8 hours a day instead of going through the cost of hiring someone new for 4 hours a day. Each employee has a fixed cost in recruitment, training, management, turnover, per person costs and more that doesn't go away.

Re: The myth of Japan's failure

#79

Post by mahyarm »

rayiner wrote: post #55
abracat1 wrote: post #30

It is easy and popular for westerners to romantacize Japan - but it has serious and structural problems. When analyzed on its own (instead of comparing it to the USA) it becomes readily apparent. I will just say a few observations which show that the picture the article paints is not quite accurate. Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live…

> Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live with their parents - and their whole income is expendible. I don't know if this phenomeneon started after the bubble economy, but it is quite shocking. Living in larger family units is actually very efficient. The way we do things here in the U.S. is actually shockingly inefficient. Parents buy big…

A lot of these people start renting out the extra space.
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