Marc wrote: >"Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Wall Street Journal >(9/10/90) reported on why Japan has been so much more successful in >conserving oil than the U.S. The report focused on the role of >Japan's government in coordinating energy programs and compelling >corporations to install energy-saving machinery. Yet it managed to >overlook what Ronald Morse, an energy specialist quoted in the >article, subsequently described to EXTRA! as the most important >reason of all: a tax policy that keeps Japanese energy prices high >and demand low." > >Let's not mention that the Japanese economy is in the toilet - that >would be impolite.
It would also be nonsense. They're having a highly successful economic crisis that would be the envy of the whole world, including very much the US of A, if they but realized it and stopped being taken in by Japanese angst. As I said previously, you have to try to imagine an economic crisis that doesn't in any way include anything remotely resembling any shortage of money or resources. This is an EXTREMELY wealthy country. It reminds me of a restaurant owner I knew in Hong Kong during the first property bust there (though not quite, he was in a worse situation). I dropped in to visit him and said, How're things? Terrible! Terrible! I'm losing $30,000 a day! Only it turned out that, for a while when things were up, he'd been making $70,000 a day but now he was only making $40,000 a day, the poor man. Anyway Marc, maybe you didn't notice that that story is 11 years old? And I've been hearing dire stories of economic collapse in Japan, dragging the world's economy down behind it, for longer than that. There is no visible sign of an economic crisis here in Japan, no boarded up shops, no dead factories, no poor Japanese, no shortage of business, new buildings going up as usual, full shopping malls, everything spick and span and in excellent repair, no apparent signs of decline anywhere, no old cars on the road, very expensive gear in excellent condition still being widely discarded and going into landfills, and indeed a best-selling book on how to throw away stuff you don't need more creatively. I also said previously that if you sent out a photographer to do a photo essay on the economic crisis he wouldn't find a single image. Have you noticed the photographs the Western media news stories use? Punters looking anxiously at stock market trading screens, such as you'll find in any major city in any industrialized country. Crisis shmisis. Krugman is quite interesting on the Japanese economic crisis. >Prosperity is inversely tied to the cost of energy, >folks, and anybody who really believes that giving the bureaucracy a >dollar or two every time we buy gas at the pump is going to help us >should move to Europe or Japan...and keep a stiff upper lip in the face >of chronic, steadily rising unemployment. :-) >When free market prices for a commodity go up, "Free market"? What's that? "Free market prices" for energy? You're kidding? >the extra profit goes >into producers' pockets and provides an incentive for capital to migrate >either to increase supply or to provide alternatives. When prices are >raised artificially and the extra cost is pissed away by government, the >result is economic stagnation now and worse to come. That was the Wall Street religion back in the Reagan-Thatcher days, Friedmanesque stuff. You still go to that sad old church? I think you can upgrade to neo-liberalism for only a small fee. Not that it'll help a lot. Keith >Marc de Piolenc >Iligan City, Philippines Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
