Posted on 12/29/2011 6:25:43 AM PST by Kaslin
It seems most every industrialized nation that has exported many of its manufacturing plants and jobs to cheap labor nations ends up with a mushrooming debt problem.
Japan really doesn’t produce anything other than strange people and cartoons.
They are sunk because they depend on everyone else.
This could be why Honda is building three new assembly plants in the US...
scary.
I think Japan initially started building auto plants in the US to fend off the growing pressure for some restrictions as they began to take a larger and larger share of the US auto market. Now, producing where a firm plans to sell makes a lot of sense and it avoids several potential problems. US auto makers have done this in Europe since pre-WWII.
Honda is also building a new plant in Mexico that will employ 3,000.
General Macarthur called Japan a nation of 12 year olds. I believed the hysteria that Japan was going to rule the world, till I was stationed there for a year (84-85). I’ll be blasted by the Blank Slate Theory crazies, but basically Japan would love to revert to a norm of feudalism and stagnation instead of some stupid white liberals one world nonsense.
Attempting to replace real growth/production with debt? Probably looks great for a few years. Long enough to win a few elections, inflate stocks, increase housing prices, and increase bonuses for corp executives. Then the party ends, which is where we find ourselves today.
Maybe another tour would convince you otherwise.
Japan is the world's third largest manufacturer after the United States and China. It produces the largest manufacturing output per capita in the world. I don't know what you're talking about.
Per Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the US government now spends almost a trillion per year on welfare type programs for working age Americans and their families. Of course, 40% of that is borrowed money.
Medicaid is the biggest of those programs.
Right. Instead of focusing on internal growth, they focus on a weak currency, exports, and maintaining the status quo. It's wrong, but it's popular with politicians, large established corporations, and can be sustained for a very long time.
Yep, and we're just puzzling about how it will all be resolved, and maybe trying to prepare for it.
Yes, but they don't improve wealth by themselves. In the 1700's just about everyone was farming or making something. Science and technology increase efficiency so that each unit of input makes more units of output.
Those "cut takers" can actually enhance efficiency. I've created many analytical software systems that help a corporation plan huge expenditures of money. I take a small cut, but I've saved millions of dollars in waste. Keeping track of what a wealth producer is doing isn't non-essential; it's critical. Any company that doesn't do this will fail.
The article’s title and some of the rhetoric implies that the author foresees some sort of violent eruption in or from Japan, should the anticipated economic events occur.
What, I wonder, would that be? Japan’s population is older, in the aggregate, than the population of The Villages, and there are fewer NRA members and a lower percentage of military retirees in Japan. Whom does he imagine is going to “explode”: the elderly, or the Lolitas in “Hello Kitty” costumes?
Japan's currency is the strongest it's ever been. They are still a manufacturing super-power and exporter because they've had no inflation for a decade. That is the result of the BOJ maintaining a stable monetary base.
When there's no inflation, technological advances result in productivity increases that are reflected in lowered prices to consumers. This has enabled Japan (and Germany, too) to maintain their trade surplus even in the face of a rising currency.
Japan doesn't need to develop its internal economy. Its internal economy is just fine as evidenced by the high standard of living and low (4.6%) rate of unemployment. Its government spending, on the other hand, is ridiculous.
I agree. "Cut taker" is the wrong term. Every person who contributes to the manufacture and sale of a product creates added value (wealth). There are two economic types: wealth creators and wealth consumers.
The largest wealth consumers are government, the health industry and education. There are tons more, of course, but those are the biggies.
Instead of health “industry”, I should have specified health providers. The pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers are wealth creators.
And that's only way Japan could have become a wealthy nation since it has limited natural resources. And it also has limited agricultural, timber and mining, and had to import much of what it needed to build it's manufacturing industries.
The question now is how much of their manufacturing have they moved to cheap labor nations, and can what is left support their domestic employment needs and their aging population.
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