Japan has a form of capitalism that works
May 7, 2018 2:30 AM   Subscribe

Jesper Koll argues that Japan has a form of capitalism that works. "Japan’s economy is working well and deserves more attention as a model for 'capitalism that works.' Most importantly, the system is very good at bringing up the bottom of the income pyramid and generating exceptional inclusion for all in financial wealth creation. This is why there will not be a nationalist-populist movement in Japan — the system is working. Yes, Japan does deserve the Nobel Prize for applied economics."
posted by gen (73 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is also the country where 'death by overwork' is a recognised part of the mortality statistics, yes?
posted by Happy Dave at 2:54 AM on May 7, 2018 [71 favorites]


> This is also the country where 'death by overwork' is a recognised part of the mortality statistics, yes?

Indeed. Koll does not cover the issues like 'karoshi' (death by overwork) or 'hikkikomori' (shut-ins) which are societal problems. I would argue that death by overwork is rare however the problems with shut-ins in Japan is significant.
posted by gen at 3:00 AM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


This is why there will not be a nationalist-populist movement in Japan
o_O

For certain values of "nationalist-populist".
posted by runcifex at 3:01 AM on May 7, 2018 [66 favorites]


UK research suggests that immigration has a small impact on average wages of existing workers but more significant effects for certain groups: low-wage workers lose while medium and high-paid workers gain.

An OECD study of the impact of immigration on the unemployment of domestic workers in OECD countries (including the UK) during 1984-2004 found that an increase in the share of migrants in the labour force increases unemployment for those with skills most similar to the migrants in the short to medium term (over a period of 5-10 years), but that immigration has no significant impact on unemployment in the long run (Jean and Jimenez 2010).

Resident foreign population in Japan = 1.75%
Resident foreign population in USA = 14.4%
posted by Lanark at 3:02 AM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


From the article "approximately 9 percent of households own less than $10,000 worth of net financial assets". Sure, maybe it works better than US capitalism. Which actually seems to be the main thrust of the article. It works for a certain value of "works".
Capitalism is still a broken, shitty system. It's still always going to have cycles of boom and bust, of pointless economic destruction in the name of increasing the rate of profit.

Furthermore no capitalist system works while it's still inflicting terrible conditions on people elsewhere on other countries. Their system may "work" for Japan, but they're still inflicting the imperialist thievery and exploitation inherent in capitalism on other countries. So they're just doing better at redistributing the profits of their capitalism within Japan.
If you've still got poor people, and you still have rich people, no, your system doesn't work. I understand the desire to uphold a more interventionist form of capitalism, but it's still capitalism. Also, I'm assuming that there is some form of increased intervention, because the article sure as hell isn't interested in offering any explanation beyond a labour shortage due to demographic factors.

"Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said: Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer. Personally, I completely agree with this statement and do think any policymaker should take it as a guiding principle. "
Bullshit nonsense. Other research outside of the article indicated that the rich in Japan are less rich than elsewhere, so obviously Japan must be doing something about that.
Then twice in two paragraphs in succession "Not by taxing the rich". Absurd. Never actually justified in the article. Then from outside research "Japan's individual income tax rates including local taxes are among the highest tax rates in the world. The effective top marginal tax rate is around 50%".
From another source "The Personal Income Tax Rate in Japan stands at 55.95 percent. Personal Income Tax Rate in Japan averaged 51.36 percent from 2004 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 55.95 percent in 2016 and a record low of 50 percent in 2005."
This article is capitalist agitprop. At best.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 3:07 AM on May 7, 2018 [70 favorites]


> "For certain values of 'nationalist-populist'."

Yeah, I mean ...

"[Prime Minister] Shinzō Abe ... is a conservative whom political commentators have widely described as a right-wing nationalist. He is a member of the revisionist Nippon Kaigi and holds revisionist views on Japanese history, including denying the role of government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II ... [He] advocates revising Article 9 of the pacifist constitution to permit Japan to maintain military forces."

But a nationalist-populist movement will never take hold in Japan?
posted by kyrademon at 3:27 AM on May 7, 2018 [53 favorites]


My prefecture and the neighboring ones have volunteer groups distributing past-their-sell-date pastries and and bread-rolls to families who can’t afford to feed their children.

No matter how happy the writer is about the situation in Japan not being as atrocious as the US, their ain’t no way it’s good enough.

Also, even if few individuals physically die from overwork, the amount of people too crushed to reproduce, by forming families or other deep and nourishing relationships, is quite staggering.

Sorry Japan, no prizes for you just yet.
posted by AxelT at 3:41 AM on May 7, 2018 [37 favorites]


Koll does not cover the issues like 'karoshi' (death by overwork) or 'hikkikomori' (shut-ins) which are societal problems.

Does he deal with the effects of an authoritarian, xenophobic society? Or are all societal conditions irrelevant?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:45 AM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


It's a weird article. If it had been framed, "Japan has lower income inequality than many other countries, let's figure out what they're doing right" it probably would have been fine, but instead it was more "Japan has lower income inequality than many other countries, THEREFORE THEY HAVE SOLVED ALL OF CAPITALISM'S PROBLEMS AND EVERYONE THERE IS HAPPY FOREVER."
posted by kyrademon at 3:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [52 favorites]


How does the lack of equality for women in the workplace contribute to this?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:09 AM on May 7, 2018 [29 favorites]


This is the country whose form of capitalism allows for killing whales under the rubric of "research", right?
posted by Thorzdad at 4:23 AM on May 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


a model for 'capitalism that works.' Most importantly, the system

Socialism has been discredited, hopefully, for ever. What alternative is there, really?
posted by Kwadeng at 4:30 AM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Now there's a question begged.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:50 AM on May 7, 2018 [30 favorites]


What alternative is there, really?

Thatcher's still dead...

*squints* Noam, stop trolling
posted by PMdixon at 4:53 AM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Socialism has not been discredited to all. I'm not going to have the full discussion here, but you know full well that it's alive and kicking and that most people who support it consider most "socialist" regimes to not be that. In my case I consider the USSR to have turned into state capitalism very quickly. Not a workers state.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:05 AM on May 7, 2018 [28 favorites]


It's as if he looked at Japan, saw lower (visible) incidences of some of the problems other countries suffer from, and assumed everything was fine, rather than looking close enough to figure out what the Japan-specific problems are.
posted by huimangm at 5:06 AM on May 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


Man, this article could fly at a time when we didn't have internet, and couldn't check that wikipedia literally puts "Japonese nationalism" and "Right-wing populism" in Abe's LDP ideology column (or could remember the occasional diplomatic rifts caused by some in the party because WWII never ended, and other things never happened). Or that we didn't know that their work culture is unhealthy, and even if karoshi is generally exaggerated in the west, extreme overtime hours aren't. Of course, the later are just good practices of capitalism.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:09 AM on May 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


As many problems as there are with the article, it's nice to see at least one acknowledgement that having your economy gently shrink while income for the poorest goes up is not, as all the other pundits wharrgarbl, an economic disaster.
posted by clawsoon at 5:16 AM on May 7, 2018 [18 favorites]


To expand on that point, here are some words used by other publications to describe what's happening in Japan:

tragedy
spectre
zombie
3rd lost decade

That's what it sounds like when the poor are getting richer instead of the rich getting richer.
posted by clawsoon at 5:25 AM on May 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


So I’m 33 with two BA degrees and pulling down ¥3,000,000 a year and it’s not considered all that bad. On the other hand, with the significantly lower cost of living (¥70,000 for an apartment with a parking space on the outskirts of a reasonably major city) and lower cost of insurance (¥20,000 a month or so), it is, in a very real sense, like making nearly twice as much in the US (up to and including savings).

Which is to say: man, the American housing and insurance situations are RIDICULOUSLY BROKEN
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:16 AM on May 7, 2018 [29 favorites]


(To save everybody some googling, a relatively accurate rule of thumb given current exchange rates is to knock two zeroes off a yen value to convert it to USD.)
posted by tobascodagama at 6:30 AM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


I know Japan does actually have some ethnic minorities, but even insofar as anything in Japan is working, it's also probably worth at least some kind of a footnote that, for example: Japanese attitudes about living wages for certain jobs or acceptable housing policy may be impacted by the fact that those jobs/homes in Japan are currently held by people who look like them, and may not hold up to a change in immigration policy or be applicable to countries with more-than-incidental immigrant populations. Or, say, a huge and awful legacy of slavery.
posted by Sequence at 6:31 AM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Resident foreign population in Japan = 1.75%
Resident foreign population in USA = 14.4%


Resident foreign population in Canada = 20.6%

Resident foreign population in Australia = 28.2%

both of which have stronger social welfare systems than the US.
posted by jb at 6:38 AM on May 7, 2018 [49 favorites]


Wait, I'm pretty sure I can google up several years worth of articles about an entire generation of Japanese lost to unending economic stagnation after the huge boom of the cyberpunk era when Japan was the way to the future.

Is this like the tides or something? Is Japan coming back in again? It's hard to keep up.
posted by Naberius at 6:42 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


jb: Resident foreign population in Canada = 20.6%
Resident foreign population in Australia = 28.2%


I think it comes down to what percentage of the population descends from people who didn't have a choice whether to be part of colonial settlement. In Canada and Australia, it's mostly the Aboriginal populations who didn't choose to be part of it, and, well, those populations haven't been treated very well by the state, have they?
posted by clawsoon at 6:45 AM on May 7, 2018


This article is not about Japan.
posted by hawthorne at 6:47 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


What a surprise that a hedge fund manager advocates not raising taxes on the rich. This is a trash article that's a thin advertisement for their firm, and I flagged it as such.

Also, apart from everything else this piece of shit parasite gets wrong, trump wasn't elected solely by poor people - he was in fact largely elected by the white middle class, who's "economic uncertainty" is a cover story for white supremacy. The entire framing of tossing crumbs to the lower sectors as a salve to rising nationalism is laughably idiotic.
posted by codacorolla at 7:04 AM on May 7, 2018 [20 favorites]


Socialism Capitalism has been discredited, hopefully, for ever. What alternative is there, really?
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:07 AM on May 7, 2018 [20 favorites]


53% of people making less than 50K voted for Clinton, so stop using the working class as an excuse for reactionary bullshit.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:08 AM on May 7, 2018 [21 favorites]


The old joke during the Cold War was that there are only 4 types of economies: Capitalist, Communist, Japan and Argentina.

Basically by saying something worked in Japan (or didn’t work in Argentina) really told you nothing about how it would work anywhere else since they were unique enough that looking at them at a model will drive you insane.
posted by jmauro at 7:30 AM on May 7, 2018 [15 favorites]


As far as foreign labor goes (hi, foreign laborer in Japan here), one of the more insidious things going on at the moment is the importation of cheap labor through "language school" visa farms. Essentially, people are scouted in whatever country, and encouraged to come to Japan to study the language. Student visa holders are allowed to work up to a certain set number of hours a week, magically one below full time employment. Labor laws also allow them to be paid less than minimum wage. They take the crap jobs young Japanese people don't want to work (janitorial, kitchen, fast food), but due to their student visa status, once they finish their program, that's it, they're done, no more visa.

This way, Japan gets its cheap foreign labor without having to deal with unwanted foreigners putting down too many roots. And, since the foreign labor are aware of the scam, and are using the country right back, their unwillingness to do the (pointless) work of trying to fit in to a society that doesn't really want them provides more talking points for the conservative/nationalists/racist assholes to point out that foreigners can never really assimilate, and immigration should be made even more difficult.

Sorry to be so cynical, but even though I have come to view this place as my home, I'm not blind to how foreign labor is exploited here. Saying, hey, come here, work for peanuts, but never think you can put down roots on one side, then complaining about how the foreigners don't feel the need to contribute to society is sickening to me. It is, unfortunately, pretty much the official policy, as it keeps wages down and jobs filled, sort of.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:48 AM on May 7, 2018 [42 favorites]


If it had been framed, "Japan has lower income inequality than many other countries, let's figure out what they're doing right" it probably would have been fine,

That's not true, though. Japan's Gini coefficient is above the median. The country has 20% child poverty (mostly in single-parent households). Women earn 50% of men (about the equivalent of $1,200 a month for women).

What does work in Japan is infrastructure spending, healthcare and overall affordability. Thanks to expansionary fiscal policy (higher government spending financed by borrowing) and the resulting deflation, the COL in Japan is really really cheap.

I'm saying this coming from Canada, though, where everything, notably food and housing, is really expensive.
posted by JamesBay at 8:04 AM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


As far as I can tell this is an exceptionally vapid article. It just seems to point to a few random things about the Japanese economy and assert that (in some undefined way) these explain lower inequality. Even if one were to accept the article's analyis (such as it is) as comprehensible and valid, there's no suggestion of how anyone might go about implementing policy to encourage a more Japan-like economy. It seems like the sort of analysis one would be somewhat disappointed with from an undergraduate, rather than anything illuminating.
posted by howfar at 8:04 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


As far as I can tell this is an exceptionally vapid article.

It sort of depends on who the article is intended for. Jesper Koll is an investment consultant, and he's trying to persuade foreign investors to invest in Japan. So his schtick is that "the economy is strong and stable" and "the yen will never devalue" and "corporate profits are great."

Speaking from experience, trying to sell Japan to an audience unfamiliar with Japan is a tough row to hoe, so naturally he's going to focus on the macro rah-rah-rah stuff, because, for an investor, Japan *is* attractive.

And Japanese companies a foreigner might be interested in investing in are not making their money in Japan, anyway. They don't care as much about wage stagnation at home if they can sell washing machines in Myanmar etc.

So... invest in Japan! It's solid, baby!
posted by JamesBay at 8:14 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


Not by taxing the rich, but by very positive demographic dynamics in Japan: The growing scarcity of labor is forcing steadfast improvement in employment offered — not part time or contracts, but full time — as well as steadfast pay increases for particular jobs at the bottom end of the employment attractiveness spectrum.

So all we need to do is create scarcity of labor? Who do we deport, kill, or imprison first?

This article is not about Japan.

I agree it's about European and North American investing, but it also seems to be about the 'rightness' of nationalism and severely limited immigration.
posted by Miko at 8:19 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


it just seems that the language barrier has led to misunderstanding of the current ethnonationalist capitalism of japan. Additionally again, liberals seem to be purposefully confusing populism with racism.

Didn't Japan nationalize their banks? it least more than the brookings institution wants. So, is the secret to 'capitalism that works' to nationalize the financial industry? I could ride with that.
posted by eustatic at 8:23 AM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I met Jesper a few times in Tokyo when he worked for JP Morgan. He was always uber-bullish on Japan's economy (and, by extension, the Japanese stock market.) On one hand, in the depths of Japan's economic woes, it was good to see there was at least one optimist still out there. On the other hand, he was far more of a salesman than a strategist, and it showed. I'm not surprised he'd say something like this - it's definitely in the same vein of some of our conversations from several years ago.

Incidentally, the scuttlebutt on the street was that his wife, Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs, was the better strategist of the two. I never met her personally, so I have no opinion on the matter myself.
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 8:27 AM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


Incidentally, the scuttlebutt on the street was that his wife, Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs, was the better strategist of the two. I never met her personally, so I have no opinion on the matter myself.

This pair of sentences is really a marvel if you think about them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:34 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


On one hand, in the depths of Japan's economic woes, it was good to see there was at least one optimist still out there.

There's also this tendency among non-Japanese who have devoted their lives in some way to Japan (myself included) to be boosterish about the country (there's also a significant cohort of long-termers who are intensely pessimistic about the country), since it's a complex place, and there a lot of good things about it.

One thing I don't quite get, by the way, is why encouraging more immigration is supposed to be intrinsically for Japan, and for the immigrants themselves.

Typically the argument is that immigrants will "take care of Japan's aging population" (caregiving is a crappy job with crappy pay) and would "help pay taxes as Japan's population continues to age". Caregivers and agricultural labourers don't pay much tax though.

I personally think that Japan should open up immigration -- it's a wonderful place to live -- but when we say we need to encourage immigration to Japan, to Canada, to the UK, we're also saying that conditions in the home countries are bad (why else would masses of people want to emigrate?) and will never get better.

It's a colonial attitude.
posted by JamesBay at 8:46 AM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


In my case I consider the USSR to have turned into state capitalism very quickly. Not a workers state.

hmmm, this sounds like an argument that comes from really, really needing capitalism to be the supreme (and only) bogeyman.

Socialism Capitalism has been discredited, hopefully, for ever. What alternative is there, really?

Couldn't we just say that the problem is with systems themselves? That ultimately bureaucratic compulsion to impose squareness on what amount to round items (humans, that is). That always leads to absurdity.
posted by philip-random at 8:55 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Isn't Japan also the same country with people living in gaming cafes because they can't afford housing?
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 8:55 AM on May 7, 2018


This pair of sentences is really a marvel if you think about them.

For that to be true, you'd have to believe that big bank equity strategists generally added value to my firm's investment process. This, most definitely, was not the case.
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 8:56 AM on May 7, 2018


So all we need to do is create scarcity of labor? Who do we deport, kill, or imprison first?

No need to actively do anything. There's the Black Death route, where the following century is one of reletive prosperity. With the dismantling of the CDC, we could easily go that route.

Or one can wait for an increasingly rapid . Though it should G be noted that while Japan's economy is exacerbating the decline, sinukar trends are going through all post-demographic transition industrial societies.
posted by happyroach at 8:57 AM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The comments on the article seem to be refreshingly on the nose, too.
posted by ambrosen at 9:06 AM on May 7, 2018


Couldn't we just say that the problem is with systems themselves?

I blame people. Any system would function perfectly without them. Don't you agree, fellow human?
posted by FJT at 9:11 AM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


I'm not encouraging immigration to Japan. I'm hoping that Japan will open up and allow people who wish to live and work here the ability to do so, without creating hoops to jump through so close to impossible that fewer than a handful ever complete them (the Phillipine nursing program that allowed employers to pay "nursing trainees" far below market wages while demanding a near mastery of Japanese in two or three years while working full time, which, in the end, only three candidates met the requirements to be offered an extension; as far as I know, none of them chose to stay).

Look around Tokyo. Companies have already accepted the fact that foreign labor is a necessary thing. There isn't a convenience store or McDonalds without at least half the staff being non-Japanese. The problem is that most of the people working these jobs are here under bogus "student" scams that let them into the country, then spit them out and throw them away.

Or, in terms of the colonialism aspect, well, here I am, since I came here to pay back my student loan debt faster than I would have been able to in my home country, able to get health insurance that would have been withheld from me due to preexisting conditions. I was a teacher, and made enough money to put a down payment on a house I'd never have been able to afford in the states (as a teacher). Hell yes, I plan on staying in Japan, and I have no real reason to believe things are (in the near term anyway) ever going to "get any better" in my home country.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:11 AM on May 7, 2018 [8 favorites]


I personally think that Japan should open up immigration -- it's a wonderful place to live

Isn't this a question that should be asked and answered by the Japanese citizenry themselves?
posted by theorique at 9:14 AM on May 7, 2018


Isn't this a question that should be asked and answered by the Japanese citizenry themselves?

I don't think that because I'm not a Japanese citizen I can't hold an informed opinion about the country. On the other hand, I have a pretty radical perspective on immigration -- "no one is illegal", etc.
posted by JamesBay at 9:28 AM on May 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


Isn't Japan also the same country with people living in gaming cafes because they can't afford housing?

I wrote about internet cafes (self-link) a few years ago.

I don't think people living in internet cafes are choosing them because they have no other place to go, since there is plenty of affordable housing in Tokyo and other big cities, that is also close to the kinds of jobs these folks typically do (construction flagger, restaurant worker, tout).

Internet cafes are actually more expensive than low-cost housing such as rooming houses, shared houses and single-room apartments. But they're also more convenient, with a great selection of games and fast internet, and cheap junk food.

I don't think people choose Internet cafes for economic reasons.
posted by JamesBay at 9:33 AM on May 7, 2018


To be more specific, the role of Equity Strategist at a large bank is ultimately a sales role, and the target clients are usually large mutual funds and pensions. The strategist works with the bank's economists to form a broad-based, top-down view of which industries and sectors of the economy should make for good investments relative to the overall index. The strategist then recommends specific stock picks that have been recommended by the bank's industry research analysts that correspond to the industry mix that the strategist has come up with.

So, to put it in plainer English, the strategist recommends, after working with the economists and going over his/her own models, that clients should overweight, say, the auto sector. The bank's autos analyst thinks Toyota is their best pick, so the strategist would put Toyota in their model portfolio. They do this for most major industries, puts together a big model portfolio that in theory should outperform the index, and then uses that model portfolio as a basis for marketing to the bank's institutional clients.

I worked for a hedge fund that was very concentrated, usually holding only a handful of positions. Typically, we'd only have maybe 5-7 investments total in Japan, out of around 20-30 across Asia. We also tended to focus on very specific event-driven situations, so meeting with someone who's focus is on selling a broad-based index-like portfolio wasn't going to be a great use of my time. That's why I never requested a meeting with Kathy Matsui. I read her research and thought it was good for what it was, but it was never going to be a high priority meeting for me, especially given that we didn't do much business with Goldman Sachs anyway. I mainly met with Jesper because 1) we had a solid relationship with JPM and, for business-development purposes, it was worth taking a meeting; 2) honestly, he was really entertaining - after a week of dour conversations in which every single person says not to get excited about Abe, or Kuroda, or Japan in general, because nothing will ever change, in walks this effervescent, tall, gangly guy who's so full of energy he can hardly stay in his seat, bubbling over about how Japan is great, and the people are great, and how this is the best economy in the world, and how could you not invest in a place like this? It was genuinely refreshing; and 3) I really liked Jesper's junior colleague, who was doing some very interesting work.

/derail
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 9:34 AM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


FWIW, but Kathy Matsui is one of the most important non-Japanese people in the world when it comes to influencing the direction of the Japanese economy. Someone who is unfamiliar with Japan might not know this, but one does not just get to have a coffee meeting with her. Jesper Koll would be way more approachable.

At Goldman Sachs Japan, Matsui has played a key role in defining and cheerleading for Womenomics in Japan. It's a signature policy of the current Abe government.
posted by JamesBay at 9:59 AM on May 7, 2018 [12 favorites]


The ecomony of the US during and after WWII (until the 1980s) worked pretty well, because everyone in white America was invested (no pun intended) in making things work. Yes, the people at the top were still rich and got richer - the poor were poor (most of them were brown people, it's true), but the 1% wasn't necessarily trying to squeeze blood from a turnip like they are today.

The system encouraged the white middle class to go to school, get an entry-level job at a firm and become middle management. They could then buy a house and settle down to vote conservatively and not shake up the status quo for the masters too much. There were even opportunities for scary brown people to get foreman jobs or simply (relatively) well-paying manufacturing jobs that would also encourage them to support the staus quo.

Conservatives today have forgotten this. Al lthey're interested in is short-term profit and getting everything they can as fast aspossible, no matter how much damage it does to the rest of the economy. What they fail to realize is that their greed is taking away that structural protection that made it possible for them to live like kings without the mob wanting to murder them.

There's a way to fix the problems, but they're not easy. The end point is for businesses to start providing opportunity for workers/employees again at all stages of working life - from entry-level (people just out of school) to retirement. That can't be done until compnies start concerning themselves with their future and the good of society rather than making a bigger dividend for shareholders. The only way that's going to happen is to radcially alter a whole segment of the financial world - basically make illegal the very idea of derivitives and venture capital. The capacity to short and long stocks (especially shorting them) encourages people to try to cause trouble for firms and venture capital encourages people that can put together a nice presentation for rich idiots to blow through money like no tomorrow. This creates companies like Uber, who make nothing and have nothing but a list of people yet get handed billions of dollars that they more or less just set on fire. Sure, Uber takes in a lot of money but they lose more - so in the end they make negative money. So, rather than those VC investor billions going to projects that make bridges or give people good, stable, well-paying jobs with benefits for 20 years instead the money goes off into the ether (or someone's Seychelles' off-shore account).

Of course, it would also help if American society wasn't so fixated on how to cheat. "It's not cheating if you don't get caught" is one of the most poisonous thoughts a person can have, closely followed by "Well, they didn't say I COULDN'T!"

In any case, if American conservatives would think in the long term again they wouldn'tbe facing the eventual backlash that's going to come from the younger generation about to get to voting age. They've given a bunch of kids a whole lifetime of a country at war for nothing, something that just looks like stubborness with no real goal in sight and no prospects other than getting lucky with an app or a Youtube channel. The GOP has its head in the sand (mostly because they're old and they're out of touch) and don't realize the peasants (both the young ones and the scary brown ones) are organized now... and the masters have no way of nothing what they're saying or doing until it's too late and there's an eruption like the Parkland kids.

My advice: throw the dogs a bone once in a while, guys, and leave a little meat on it... don't eat everything and crap on a plate and pretend it's chocolate pudding (like the tax bill that supposeldy was going to be so great for middle America).
posted by Docrailgun at 10:22 AM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


No matter how happy the writer is about the situation in Japan not being as atrocious as the US, their ain’t no way it’s good enough.

Yeah, speaking from the U.S., I consider "Better than the U.S." to be a shockingly low bar.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:31 AM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


The system encouraged the white middle class to go to school, get an entry-level job at a firm and become middle management. They could then buy a house and settle down ...

This is a very common misstatement of who was able to buy a house in postwar USA. Being middle-management, or college educated, was not required. Millions of union blue-collar workers bought houses. This situation was in place until the advent of Reagan and the full-on assault on unions. The war on unions is to blame as much as any other thing for the decline of workers' purchasing power.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:50 PM on May 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


The point of this article: Japanese workers are doing so great the government should get a prize for it.

One minute on Google revealed this from the same newspaper:

A labor ministry survey has found that people with irregular jobs now account for 40 percent of the nation’s workforce. The continuing increase of such workers, who are typically paid less than full-time regular company employees and face unstable employment prospects, threatens to hamper sustainable growth of the nation’s economy by undermining consumer demand. It could also result in a large percentage of the population lacking proper social security protection.
posted by ecourbanist at 2:04 PM on May 7, 2018 [9 favorites]


Yeah, there are really two Japans. There’s Foreign Media Japan, whose primary export is clickbait, and then there’s Real Place Japan, which bears only a superficial resemblance.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:18 PM on May 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


I wouldn't call a system where millions of folks toil all day doing god knows what and then are compelled to go and drink to excess with coworkers, essentially continuing to work, until they can sleep and repeat it all over again. The existence of the salaryman is evidence of a bad system.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:52 PM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Eh, not everybody is a salaryman in Japan. Work-life balance is a problem in Japan, but it's also a huge problem in the United States, for example.

And alcohol consumption in Japan is lower than in the United States.
posted by JamesBay at 3:55 PM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I wouldn't call a system [good] where millions of folks toil all day doing god knows what and then are compelled to go and drink to excess with coworkers, essentially continuing to work, until they can sleep and repeat it all over again.

...I have some bad news for you about the current state of humanity.
posted by PMdixon at 4:07 PM on May 7, 2018 [5 favorites]


Yeah, if anything, America has decided that it’s time to import the worst parts of Japanese work culture (long hours and an assumption that employees will always put work first) with none of the arguable upsides (efforts to create a sense of camaraderie within the company and at least a superficial veneer of loyalty to the employees)
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:02 PM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


Socialism has been discredited, hopefully, for ever. What alternative is there, really?

Command economy socialism certainly, but is that a function of socialism or of a command economy? It seems like market socialism and mixed economies are still a bit of an open question, but what should probably be earning more skepticism is the idea of a "capitalist economy" that continually erodes the efficiencies of a free-market through political action against anti-trust interests, the effective socialization of risks for the investor class inherent in both limiting liability and legislating things as externalities that probably shouldn't be such, and the virtual elimination of class-mobility. That seems to me more like feudalism than capitalism, and we definitely have a longer and more thorough history of the failure of such systems. I appreciate the efficiencies of a free market, but the existence of such is not guaranteed merely by calling an economic system capitalism.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:22 PM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


I am not a student of the dismal science though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:22 PM on May 7, 2018


The idea that Womenomics (or the 'third arrow' as it was referred to) was, or is, a core part of Abe's rehash of Reagan's economic policies has been dead for a while. The whole thing was a sham, a random target of X% of management positions that should be filled by women. Companies essentially responded by saying no, and Abe backed down very, very quickly.

As for the irregular employment, that's the thing that's worried me for years. The traditional system of a company hiring and training a worker for life had the added effect of companies deciding their way of training was the only effective one. If someone worked at Toshiba, Hitachi wouldn't want them later, because they'd need total retraining, and it would just be cheaper and easier to hire a fresh college graduate and train/indoctrinate them.

One of the biggest problems with this is if you don't land a job right out of college, or if you do, but it doesn't work out, you're out of the game, for the most part. It's incredibly unlikely for anyone outside of recent graduates to land full time jobs at major Japanese corporations. That's where a lifetime of contract work and scraping together part-time work to make ends meet comes in. The contract work is just as brutal as temp work in the states, and comes with just as much work and responsibility as a full time worker, but for a fraction of the pay, and a well-meaning but functionally disastrous law that requires any temporary worker to be made a regular employee after three years. The result of the law is contracts that can't be renewed after 2 years and 11 months and the like.

For those teaching English, and similar law that tried to lower the hours threshold for benefit eligibility could end teaching as a reliable job. The standard scam for keeping teachers from being legally full-time (and eligible for benefits) is to contract them for 29.5 hours of work. That has been enough for a good number of people to make a living at teaching, but supposedly, the new law will lower that threshold to something like 20 hours a week, which could end up with the larger English schools offering nothing only 19.5 hour contracts in order to avoid paying benefits.

The economy is in no way great here. If you didn't manage to grab the brass ring in the one moment you might not have even had (graduating from a top university), it's a lifetime of scrambling to make ends meet. Hell, look at all of the taxi drivers. Where do you think all of those middle aged men came from? Almost all of them worked as salarymen, and when they lost their jobs, took the one job they knew they could get. And self-driving cars are going to kill that not-very-good safety net, too. As for internet/manga cafes being a choice, housing in Japan, with key money, deposits, and agency fees usually means you're looking at 5 months rent up front. Sure, long term, a night at a net café is more expensive, but that's true of any industry that profits off of poverty. A gallon of milk at the convenience store in the city is always going to be more expensive than the same gallon at Wal-Mart in the suburbs, but the question is who can get there without a car.

A more telling/damning example is the rise of 'share-houses,' which seem to have evolved from something mostly targeted to foreigners who wanted to live in Tokyo twenty years ago to a pretty much standard way for people to keep a roof over their heads, from young Japanese people stuck working various part-time jobs to recently divorced women with no work experience. These have popped up everywhere, and have quickly become a regular part of society, which has just accepted that being able to live alone in your own home is some sort of luxury good reserved for only the best, brightest, and richest.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:28 PM on May 7, 2018 [14 favorites]


The idea that Womenomics (or the 'third arrow' as it was referred to) was, or is, a core part of Abe's rehash of Reagan's economic policies has been dead for a while. The whole thing was a sham, a random target of X% of management positions that should be filled by women. Companies essentially responded by saying no, and Abe backed down very, very quickly.

I don't know about that. The intent to increase women in the workforce was genuine, and by some measures the number of women in managerial positions has increased.

Cultural change is hard though. I'd also say that it's more complicated than Japan Inc. rejecting women in managerial positions. Women, besides being encouraged (or pressured) to participate more in the workforce, are also still expected to manage the household, look after children and look after aging parents -- all at the same time.

It's not a great deal, really.

On top of that, Womenomics focuses mostly on managerial positions. But not everyone in the workforce has the skills to be a manager.
posted by JamesBay at 7:40 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


In 2016 the government revised an ambitious national target of filling 30% of senior positions in both the public and private sectors with women by 2020. The new targets were 7% for senior government jobs and 15% at companies

That's one a couple dozen articles within easy reach. As cited in the article, after making a big show of having more women in his cabinet than any PM before him, he's back to having two women, total, in the cabinet. Getting women into the workforce requires serious work, not just lip service.

Even accepting that not everyone is management material, 15% is a laughably low target. That it's the target in the first place points out how dire the inequality is in the first place.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:01 PM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


My sister-in-law, who is a senior manager in local (prefectural) government, has come around a bit to Womenomics. She says there has been a change in culture from her perspective. But that's just one data point, for sure.

I'm no Abe fan at all, but I tend to think he's more pragmatic than ideological -- save for the Constitution, a totally weird, unpopular and ultimately Quixotic quest on his part.

In the case of women in the workforce, it's no different. Instead of pursuing the policy for ideological reasons (gender equality in the workplace is intrinsically good) it's more about compelling women to participate in the workforce for the national good.

The funny thing is that the Japanese government has not done anything to change tax rules, which heavily favor single-income households. Under tax rules, a married woman's professional salary is mostly eaten up by tax.

Rather than intrangience on the part of Japan Inc, I would have to say that Japanese women more than anyone else have exercised agency by continuing to decline to participate in the workforce.
posted by JamesBay at 8:48 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Japan recorded a government debt equivalent to 253 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2017."

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp

Socialism has been discredited, hopefully, for ever....

Oh, now, that's funny.
posted by Twang at 9:02 PM on May 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


On that, I can agree with you. Mrs Ghidorah has done some research, and unless she were to find an exceptionally well paying full time job (which, as a woman over forty in Japan, is highly unlikely, thanks to both sexism and ageism), it makes more financial sense for her to work up to, but not over, the 1.3 million yen limit on non-taxable income. If she were to make more than (roughly) $12000 a year, she wouldn't be able to be covered under my insurance and pension payments, and would need to pay taxes on income as well. Given the jobs that are available to her, if she decided to get a full time position, it's very unlikely she would end up with any more income, but have to work full time hours to get it. As it is, she works three to four days a week. Until the government fixes this, there's not really going to be any incentive for two income families.

As for Abe's Nihon Kaigi cult and its goals not having popular support, I'd have a hard time coming up with examples of other countries so clearly ruled by the elite, for the elite, than Japan. Most members of the cabinet are members of Nihon Kaigi, and most of the senior members of the LDP are as well. There is no effective opposition, and voter turnout among the young is depressingly low. This is a country ruled by old men, for old men.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:13 PM on May 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'd argue that there just has not been an effective opposition vehicle since the DPJ imploded following the 3.11 disasters. Voters have to be able to vote for someone they believe in.

And don't forget there are popular progressive politicians like Hosaka Nobuto and others.

And the political problems Japan faces are structural, rather than ideological. Thanks to a wonky electoral system, the LDP enjoys strong support in regional Japan, which has lagged behind Tokyo when it comes to economic revitalization. It's pork-barrel politics, not Nippon Kaigi, that has made Abe so popular.

However, Edano Yukio's Constitutional Democratic Party is promising, and should do well in elections in 2019.

There are also frequent mass demonstrations against the Abe government all over Japan.
posted by JamesBay at 10:00 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


This thought: Couldn't we just say that the problem is with systems themselves?

Performs the following thought: . . . compulsion to impose squareness on what amount to round items (humans, that is).

And exemplifies . . . always leads to absurdity.

We could indeed say the problem is with systems themselves, but that is abstracting the topic at hand to the point of absurdity, and making clean geometric shapes out of lumpy, limby, thready concepts to boot.

We could also probably talk about the article without a whole 'nother round of "Mefites" fight about Socialism for the gajillionth time.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:50 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


JamesBay, I agree Nihon Kaigi probably has little to do with Abe's popularity, or the general strength of the LDP. The issue is that, with the disparity in voting power between rural and urban voting, the continued spending/pork barrel to keep the rural voters in line, and the utter lack of any kind of opposition to coalesce (this new party, it's what, the third new opposition party in the last five years, with mostly the same people each time?) has allowed members of NK to reach near complete power. It's the stuff of rank conspiracy novels. Nihon Kaigi needs to be dragged out into the sunlight and exposed. Aside from trying to undo article 9, there's the whole return to Emporer worship and the idea that women belong in the home, turning out new loyal subjects of the empire.

The protests are heartening, but have yet to actually show any impact in elections. There's a strong, solid fatalism among young people when it comes to voting. Most of the people under 30 that I work with reply that there's no point in voting, as things are already set, and their votes, they believe, won't change anything. It's amazing, really, how much sustained work, over generations, it must have taken to convince the young that they have no say in how their lives are run.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:16 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't believe we can make generalizations about young people in Japan. In my work with Global Voices I communicate frequently with people who identify as antifa, and grassroots protesters in Okinawa opposing the bases. Others I work with raise awareness about #MeToo, or harassment on Twitter.

I don't think Japan is "the best of all possible worlds" but I don't think its polity is particularly unique. Japan is just a normal country. And, to be quite open, I'd much rather be an immigrant in Japan than in the UK.
posted by JamesBay at 9:45 PM on May 8, 2018


This is pretty interesting (but only really applies to elite F500 companies in Japan):

Japan is infamous for long, exhausting workdays. There is a reason the Japanese language has a word for "death by overwork" -- karoshi. But in a survey by Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting last year, 73% of companies said they had either implemented reforms or were in the process of doing so. Back in 2013, the ratio was only 30%.
posted by JamesBay at 9:46 PM on May 8, 2018


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