By no means Japan is low wage (if the number of parking attendants alluded to
implied) if price of limes is an indicator! One lime costs 1.5 USD roughly.
Japan with its particular institutional mix, very much socially driven, does
not believe in lay offs, prefer to have a small return and keep the workers.
Last June I met some Kyocera people, leaders in new materialsa, ceramics, etc.
The first thing they told me sure we have high costs and are under competitive
pressure but you just can't lay off people to reduce costs. It's not done.
Where the Japanese are weak is the kind of old style education, the gradual
erosion of life time employment for the new generation, the loss of direction
(an intergenerational problem), lot of legacy systems (as in banks) but are
getting away with it because of government support, banks keep lending to their
partner firms when bankrupt, and firms don't lay off workers. This model has
not unravelled to the extent western press tends to think it has or will.
cheers, a
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Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development
University of Washington
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax : (253) 692-5718
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On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, Doug Orr wrote:
Anthony,
Are you suggesting that we should look at Japan as a "low wage"
economy? Or is it possible that Japanese society does not accept bottom
line profits as the only mechanism for decision making?
Doug Orr
At 06:09 AM 2/2/2006, you wrote:
This notion of profit rate is still quite alien in Japan. Even today
Japanese companies are being told how badly they are doing and that they
need to make some money. Yet unemployment here is still low, people
generally live well, and there is hardly any lay offs. I was amazed to
see how many parking attendants were available to guide the traffic into
the parking garage. This is unthikable in a high wage economy.
Cheers, a
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development
University of Washington
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA
Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax : (253) 692-5718
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Autoplectic wrote:
[T]he 81 percent jump in profits reported Tuesday by Google was a
disappointment to speculators who had driven Google's stock to an
astronomical $471 a share as of a couple weeks ago.
The price of Google shares started to slip even before Tuesday's
earnings miss was announced as traders backed away just in case the
company did not deliver big enough gains to satisfy the insatiable
speculators.
When an 81 percent increase in profit is considered "disappointing"
you know that traders are living in a dream world.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020101732.html>
