Interesting. Last year they blamed the devalued currency for their losses.
The currency valuation has been a conundrum in Japan for decades - there's really no easy answer.
I do think there are issues within Japan beyond the most obvious ones like immigration, women in the work place, economic policy, etc. What Japan really needs to do is to develop other areas in the country as economic centers and not just places like Tokyo or Osaka, The overcrowding of the mega cities like that cause a lot of problems and are related to the various other problems that are obviously there.
On your point of global prestige, I think price has a lot to do with it. Many Japanese products are still of a very high quality, but competing with China and Korea, etc. on price is very difficult for them. It also hurts that stuff like televisions have more or less become commodities, and I doubt many Americans or Europeans give a shit who made their TV as long as it's massive and cheap and does the 1080p.
But having people cluster around a handful large cities isn't uniquely Japanese. It happens pretty much everywhere. Japan is merely an extreme example of this, due to geography (unlike many other countries, Japan doesn't have that much flat land, thus it can't easily expand its cities laterally).
The same could be said of South Korea and Seoul. Heck, a single metro area contains half of Korea's population.It's not uniquely Japanese but the combination of these cities and their culture create a pretty different reaction that what would be seen elsewhere.
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It's not uniquely Japanese but the combination of these cities and their culture create a pretty different reaction that what would be seen elsewhere.
Japan is trying to open up a bit. For example, universities are trying to attract foreign students by offering classes in English, but that's just not enough. The Japanese need to ask themselves how to make talented foreigners stay in the country. In today's economy, it's all about fighting for talents, and Japan is lacking in this regard.Yeah no. And always improving infrastructure is never a bad thing, and the price is alright.
Yeah, the current plan of making a super fast monorail is just stupid and goes against the trend. Most European countries with good train infrastructure want trains with better acceleration and a speed limit, because it doesn't make sense economically to go faster than 250 km/h.He's not knocking all infrastructure... It's pretty easy to see he's implying that you will see better ROI on other infrastructure projects rather than making an already fast train a little faster.
The same could be said of South Korea and Seoul. Heck, a single metro area contains half of Korea's population.
Africa has some major cities nearing the population size of Tokyo. Its just it's mostly slums as opposed to built up metropolis. The trend globally revolves around people continually flocking to urban environments.
Are you guys reading what I'm saying or just responding to a part that caught your eye?
Are you guys reading what I'm saying or just responding to a part that caught your eye?
They don't directly contradict your statements though.
I agree with you that - in order to push Japan back to growth - developing other areas needs to be done. But I also think they need to develop their megacities further, the trend goes to add more green and life quality into these megacities. There's huge potential if only some politicians had the courage (and support) to do real reforms.
The latter! Is that so wrong?
I'm saying that Japan's excessive centralisation, while exacerbated by some individual factors, isn't a unique problem. Nor is the stark difference in prices, local attitudes etc.Are you guys reading what I'm saying or just responding to a part that caught your eye?
With more and more people in the US having to work 2 jobs to pay their bills. It will not be long till we have the same issue, if we don't already.
I'm saying that Japan's excessive centralisation, while exacerbated by some individual factors, isn't a unique problem. Nor is the stark difference in prices, local attitudes etc.
The Japanese should take a look at other attempts to decentralise and see whether they succeeded, why they did/didn't and how much of that experience can be translated on a domestic level.
Remember when everyone in the western world looked at Japan and said "wow they have the most amazing cell phones, their technology is 5 years ahead of us!"
yeah.
was it a software thing holding them back from staying a contender?
You're not understanding. Japanese goods cost the same as before. Foreign goods cost more. That means, relatively, Japanese goods are now a better deal compared to foreign goods than they were before: a few foreign goods might now be more expensive than their Japanese equivalents, where they weren't before. That means a small part of people's income changes towards purchasing Japanese, rather than foreign, goods. This invigorates the economy because one person's spending is another person's income; if I buy a particular food item that was produced locally that money goes towards that local farmer, whereas if I buy a food item that was produced abroad that money goes abroad. Purchasing power has not universally decreased, it has only decreased on imported goods. This is most certainly something which can invigorate the economy.
Nikodemos said:Except Japanese companies tend, on average, to demand a premium from domestic buyers, which generally adjusts with the price of foreign goods. The only ones who don't are those who make barebones low(er)-quality stuff.
Crab said:Yes, this is (another) one of the problems with the Japanese economy.
No they don't, Japanese goods cost the same or more, which you have acknowledged.
Economies are integrated these days. A sale of an iPhone gets revenue to Apple Japan, which employs Japanese employees. Even for manufacturing in Japan, the raw materials are imported which cost more with a devalued currency, meaning that prices need to rise to make up for the higher costs.
The economy won't be invigorated if you hike up tariffs on imports, or place a higher sales tax rate on imported goods, which is what you would advocate for following your logic of "making Japanese goods more attractive."
So I don't think it's particularly clear cut that Abe's stimulus spending was actually helping the average person on the street, though it was obviously helping large exporting businesses by sinking the Yen slightly and it helped traders and investors, too.
From the first page, but I still want to add something on top of this: one of the biggest side effects of Abenomics was the record number of bankruptcies. This may be due to the shrinking economy too, but still hammers home that these monetary measures are only helping a select few.
Just to reflect on the Japanese economy as an aside: their main vulnerability isn't their lack of diversity but their inability to compete in the larger Asian and global economy. China and Korea, and to a lesser extent other parts of SE Asia, are the new centers of economic growth. Japan has no advantages against its competitors aside from a large tech base and financial sector.
Moreover, the increase in sales tax clearly highlights the weakness -- and thus solution -- to Japan's economy: domestic spending. Domestic spending could be stimulated by creating more free-trade agreements. FTAs may harm some industries, but the benefits to consumer spending would be huge. Conversely, these agreements can make Japanese goods more appealing to foreign markets -- especially to the billion-plus people next door. The Chinese-Japan-Korea FTA talks are promising, but we'll see if it'll actually get passed.
The immigration thing is misunderstood. Japan doesn't need "millions of immigrants" at all, it wouldn't magically create jobs, plus Japan is already over populated anyway.
The reason the cultural issues are important is because they reduce interest from high-skilled foreign workers to ever go live in Japan, and limits the emergence of innovation in the workplace environment. By having very few foreign workers in important positions, and barring women from the same jobs, you end up with a conservative and retarded (YES retarded is the good word here; meaning late) work environment. There is very little room for innovation, very little capacity in interpreting the global market too due to narrow vision. It is always in catchup mode, and even when it does catch up it probably misunderstood what it is trying to catch up to. So the evolutionary process of the work environment in Japan is incredibly slow as a result.
When you have a diversity of people in the work force, innovation emerges due to the variety of viewpoints and life experiences. This is why the US is such a strong innovating force; it has a very diverse and educated population which bring forward unique ideas and also have a great capacity at understanding and analyzing the world we live in and hence how to create products or services that can meet that demand, and can do so at a quick pace. People like to break rules, to reinvent things, not so in Japan.
This is why a conservative country like Japan needs women to gain in stature and numbers in the work environment, but also needs educated foreign labor to bring about the needed cultural change needed for Japanese businesses to be able to interpret the global market accurately and respond to its demands, and change their work environment.
It doesn't need "millions of immigrants", that's just a simplistic catch-phrase with no thought behind it in a left-right imaginary battle. It needs an innovative educated and cultured workforce that will reinvent the work environment and better translate the global market's demands. People expecting this to occur as a result of government intervention are fooling themselves. Companies that want to survive will themselves put in place benefits to attract such foreign workers, in very particular less-conservative fields such as new technology/IT/social media/etc., THEN the government will start to adopt similar measures.
But it will take forever, if ever. For sure, it doesn't need even more people, let alone cheap labor.
Will Abe lose his post over this? I doubt it. Even if the public were fed up with Abes cockup, the opposition parties can't figure out how to cooperate for a moment without backstabbing to bring down the LDP and right the course. There's no viable alternative and the people who vote are old people in rural places comfortaJapanith where the LDP are taking them. The youth of Japan are too apathetic to do anything politically about it. The LDP as it currently is, is incapable of fixing Japan. This will continue to happen.
Sorry if my writing is a bit all over the place. I hate typing on my phone during my lunch break.
Abe to dissolve parliament on Friday.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/18/world/asia/japan-politics/index.html
Japan has more government debt that any other nation
<snip>
There's no way they have more debt than the US.
What am I missing here?
There's no way they have more debt than the US.
What am I missing here?
The thing about those nukes, even at best they were only producing just under 30% of Japan's total electric based energy. Many of the npps in Japan are at or are close to reaching their operation expiry dates of 40 years. I'd say keep them on as well if it weren't for the piss poor corporate safety culture in Japan.Japan really needs to spool its nukes back up again. The energy costs are outright murdering them, both industries (making Japan-built products uncompetitive) and the guy on the street (whose bills went up repeatedly).
Not surprised. At all. Japan is never going to get out of its demographic black hole, and I feel like I have some personal insight as to why.
I've lived in Tokyo for over 7 years now, and have experienced university life, corporate life, freelancing life and now run a company that I established under my name here. I've been in Japan as a minor and as an adult, as a student and as a worker. I enjoy life here, but my current enjoyment here has come after years of experimentation, success and failure in some ways.
This is purely an anecdote, but it seems that many of the young, motivated Japanese people who could really do something to shake things up politically and economically have actually departed due to perceived marginalization by the older generation. Many of them are female. They're now living in New York, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney and other world cities and being as global and influential as the sky allows them.
I actually got into an argument recently with someone older (about 19 years older) and well respected within a certain circle due to his achievements and expertise. It was a silly misunderstanding, but the other person wanted to point out so clearly during the argument how our age difference defined our relationship. "Even if you are 100% right, you should still show respect to your elders."
Once I read that message and connected the dots, I was finally convinced. I honestly find the generation of Japan currently in their early 40's through early 50's, to be woefully ineffective as a collective (they're not bad people at all -- they're just worthless in the sense that they will not be the ones to pull Japan out of its mess). They're a limbo generation; they were around college age when the bubble popped, and were indoctrinated by the more successful generation above them, yet too young to have experienced Japan's postwar recovery and their associated agonies and triumphs, and yet too old to have experienced the internet during their formative years, thus are not highly influenced by global developments (social media, social movements, etc.) like the generations that came after them are; but then they also became the dominant workforce when Japan's economy began its 20 years of stagnation. To put it bluntly, they don't have values that are useful in the modern day. They will prioritize things like age differences over doing the right thing because their egos can't take it. If these people disappeared tomorrow, I'm convinced Japan wouldn't suffer in the least. That's what the recent argument with the older person made me wonder.
There are of course exceptions -- and in my experience, none of them are salarymen working in the corporate world.
No wonder talented, multilingual Japanese don't tend to stay. Young or old. The people they would have to report to would simply demoralize and silence them.
(I haven't talked specifically about why I resent that particular generation, and don't think it's appropriate for this thread as it's so subjective and anecdotal.)
As for skilled foreigners coming to Japan permanently, honestly, what's the point? You HAVE to like this country to make it work. You have to make your peace with the way things are here to be happy and successful, and you have to have a solid understanding of the native/dominant culture. Otherwise, people just end up leaving due to frustrations. Meanwhile, globe trotters can go to another major city like Singapore, London or any big U.S. city without the same burdens (I've never met anyone who went to Singapore because they were specifically fascinated with that country's culture), and arguably more opportunities in the business and academic sectors.
Japan needs to export more of its crazy. More seizure inducing reality/game shows in america. We are ready.
Generally the best way to measure central government debt is as a percentage of GDP. In Japan it is variously estimated at between 220% and 240% of GDP, while in the US it is at about 105% of GDP. A good Japanese economist would point out that a large portion of that debt is due to the Japanese government (central bank) lending to itself (the central government), so theoretically you could wipe that off and it'd be somewhere around 120-140% of GDP. But if you did the same for the US, ours would also drop to below 80%. US debt has also stabilized at its current ratio as the federal deficit is at about 2.8% while GDP is growing at around 2-3% while in Japan the government deficit is at about 8% of GDP and the GDP there is stagnant / declining. Put bluntly, they're never going to repay a vast portion of the debt they have accumulated.There's no way they have more debt than the US.
What am I missing here?
Photography? Even the sensor in your beloved iPhone is made by Sony. Japan has diminished but not completely wiped out.
I'll mail you some gachapon panstu if you want!Japan needs to export more of its crazy. More panty vending machines and seizure inducing reality/game shows in america. We are ready.
Do you guys mind tell me how much is electricity cost in Japan?
Here in New York, it has the most expensive rate in the Continental US. The residential electric bill is about $20/month for basic charge and on top of it about 20-25 cents per kilowatt-hour. So on average is about 25-30 cents per kw-hour.
How much is the rate in Japan?