11–20 of 111 posts
Except Chrysler was bailed out before and has now been merged/bought by a foreign auto company for the second time in 20 years.
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
That is unfair, because the government also collects the same taxes -- if not more -- from these small and medium sized companies and their employees, but it will only bail out large companies with that very tax money.
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money, don't keep useless jobs around.
the USA was able to sell its stake in GM at a profit
No: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/12/09/governme...
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
According to a link in the article the government lost over $9 Billion. I live in Metro-Detroit, saw plant closings, saw waves of dealerships close, watched whole car brands die, got my hours cut and watched delayed work hurt a lot of people around here.
Just because GM and Chrysler go into bankruptcy sans the gov doesn't mean all those jobs disappear. Yes, GM and Chrysler would take a cut (which happened anyway) but I think they'd also get reorganized better at the very least.
From what I've heard the reorganization that took place was not nearly enough. Chrysler has a mandate on the minimum number of workers needed for some contracts. This leads to situations where Chrysler is paying for 4 people so 1 person can put in half a day at a 3rd party supplier. I have stories for days.
The real tragedy in all this is a new better company could've started in Detroit. Instead, due to Zombie GM and Chrysler continuing to dominate the market, all the automotive engineering talent is slowly migrating to Silicon Valley.
>you decide to leave your job and start a business with your college buddies I know the point they were trying to make in the article, but the primary reason this doesn't happen in Japan is the cultural fear of failure rather than the system being broken. Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life. Once those corporations are in, the government will take care of them for the…
The corporations can't take care of their employees forever, so does the government can't take care of the corporations forever.. Wouldn't they not want this to hit a dead end?
This is socialism -- social ownership of risk. The rising tide lifts us all.
There are fewer winners and fewer losers, and it's only sustainable when everybody buys into it and nobody gets greedy or envious. Such success is only seen in homogeneous societies, and Japan is largely homogeneous.
Conversely, this is the reason for Europe's clinging to socialism for the better part of the last century (homogeneous society), and it will most definitely change over the next one. Europe will start to look more like Canada and the US -- a melting pot of sorts -- and maintaining a Euro-centric identity will be far more difficult as many scramble to align themselves with a nation-centric identity. A strong EU that leans to the right is inevitable, and national identity will fall by the wayside as they come to the crushing realization that national identity doesn't put food on the table or keep the lights on when you have already given up so much.
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinvestment
According to the Austrian school, market interventions like those in Japan are bad _regardless_ of the effect on productivity, because they represent malinvestment.
The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…
China owns GM. http://qz.com/594984/the-secret-history-of-gms-chinese-bailo... ;
Meanwhile, in the Japan some of us actually live in:
1) Very few 26 year olds will be successfully able to convince their 26 year old co-workers to leave Sharp, because that is a once-in-a-lifetime mistake. I am literally related to a $ANONYMOUS_FOR_SAKE_OF_RELATIVE employee who is presently miserable and cannot leave because that means an end of economic stability for his family forever and his family makes no secret of how unhappy they would be in that situation.
2) If you are a 26 year old startup founder and you ask for a bank loan ^H^H^H^H business checking account, be prepared to get told "Oh hell no.", but very politely. The first variant of "Oh hell no" is "Hmm, well theoretically speaking we do have business checking accounts available as a product. Can we see your articles of incorporation, business plans, office rental contract, orders from customers, etc etc?" Upon which you say "Well we're making LCDs so we don't have orders yet because we need a bank account to e.g. purchase machinery" at which point "We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your business."
Not a theoretical concern: I'm presently 2 weeks into the fun with a large Japanese bank trying to get an account issued, which shakes fist at a personal bugbear is not exactly the easiest thing to accomplish for a Western tech entrepreneur in Tokyo at the moment. (I've been asked about Bitcoin three times already.) If I manage to get the account, it will because I rounded up 123 pages of documentation (not an exaggeration, that's a count) from previous work to convince the bank that I was not a ML nor fraud nor credit risk.
3) Venture capital: you will not successfully receive sufficient-to-create-a-physical-product venture capital as a 26 year old in Japan. It's difficult to raise what would be "trivial by Valley standards" just to build software products: prepare for 6 months of All The Fundraising Fun You Can Imagine to get an A round sized like a modest seed round in St. Louis. You need substantial industry connections here to convince a corporate VC to give you the corporation's money. The high-percentage way to "compete" with Sharp is to spend 30 years in it, get recognized internally as a very competent performer who is not management track, "quit" to "run a startup" which makes a product that Sharp definitely needs but would have difficulty making without you, receive money from Sharp's affiliated VC vehicles, and "exit" by taking the buyout order from your single customer, which will naturally be Sharp.
("What would incentivize Sharp to do that?" Because all salarymen at Sharp of a given age are equal but some are more equal than others. M&A is allowed to make decisions regarding compensation that HR is not. This incentivizes folks who are internally indispensable but not managers who show up in the Nikkei/WSJ by name to do a bit of revolving-door. Think like Google but amped to 11.)
Meanwhile, you manage to secure venture-capital funding and even a bank loan. The interest rate is high, but with your rapid growth, you should be able to pay it back. Meanwhile, in the Japan some of us actually live in: 1) Very few 26 year olds will be successfully able to convince their 26 year old co-workers to leave Sharp, because that is a once-in-a-lifetime mistake. I am literally related to a $ANONYMOUS_FOR_SA…