Posted on 12/12/2006 1:15:43 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
TOKYO -- The decline in Japan's population could undermine the country's economic recovery unless workers perform more productively, and the new economy minister is taking aim at inefficient industries and workers.
Hiroko Ota, who took office in September, faces an economy that is back on track after more than a decade in a slump. Japan's big structural problems have mostly been fixed: The banks have cleaned up their bad loans, and prices have stopped falling. Japan's economy grew at an average of more than 2% a year from 2003 through 2005, and it is expected to grow another 2% or so a year in 2006 and 2007.
But long-term challenges remain. Japan's huge national debt amounts to 175% of gross domestic product, compared with 64% in the U.S. Cutting the debt gets harder with a falling population because Japan has fewer tax-paying workers. If production per worker increases more slowly than the number of workers falls, overall economic production will fall.
"Japan has escaped from its downturn," the 52-year-old Ms. Ota said in an interview. "We need to improve productivity more than the population declines."
Japan, like mature economies in Europe, is engaged in a major rethinking of its economy -- including how to pare down welfare states along with the job and market protections introduced during the years after World War II. These changes now are seen as barriers to growth.
Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi started the process, cutting public spending, deregulating industry and reducing the number of public employees. His successor, Shinzo Abe, has pledged to continue small-government policies while creating a platform for growth.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
WOW
Depopulation is gonna play havoc with Europe and Japan.
They are on the right track. I wonder how long it will take the rest of the world to realize the same?
When Japan had 90 million fifty years ago they were so jammed in they could not move and were afraid of even more population. Now they have 120 million and are worried they are depopulating.
This sounds like the Ice Age -- Global Warming crowd. Which is it today?
It looks like Japan's enthusiasm for robots hasn't been a mistake.
They should import some illegal aliens to do the work the Japanese won't do...</sarcasm off
Why don't they have more kids????
You know, encourage the fertile women folk to put some love in the oven.
A lot of the breathless, "We're now importing many, many foreigners...!"-type articles in Japan are manufactured with a foreign readership in mind.
It used to be the case in the era of the high yen that you could see on every major Tokyo sidewalk corner pockets of Iranian illegals, that were tolerated for a time. In Harajuku, Ueno, and Shinjuku, there were THOUSANDS of them.
They got rid of ALL of 'em.
Where'd they go ?
Sounds good but there has never been a Japanese Welfare State. So who knows what this is supposed to mean.
Do they retire? That's a serious question as I do not know if they tend to retire or go on to different jobs.
The sexual revolution wasn't only about bed hopping. It was also about attitudes about traditional sex roles for men and women. Japan has moved right along with more women with careers, delaying or putting off marriage, delaying or putting off having kids. Add it all up and it results in population declining.
Whether that's good or bad is a moral/value judgement, and if we're good politically correct drones, we won't question whether declining populations in developed countries are good or bad.
They got rid of ALL of 'em.I hope they sent them here where they belong.
They should convert to Islam and produce large, muslim broods (sarc).
Most likely is referring to what Japan calls a "sanctuary" economy, also called a convoy economy, in which over 60% of workers have birth to death job security and benefits.
Can anyone tell me how this debt came about? Does Japan typically run an annual deficit with their national budget? Or is this referring to something else - for instance, does this include total entitlements and obligations of the whole economy?
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