What has and continues to impede growth in Japan is excessive government market intervention and regulation. The way out of deflation and stagnation is free markets and deregulation, not easier money.
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Forbes columnist Stephen Harner
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1
NeverSubmit
Why does he stay regulation twice?
My guess is that the second regulation is actually deregulation.
Perhaps a misquote.
0
Kenjo McCurtain
Here's the main article. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2012/06/13/more-than-easier-money-japan-needs-deregulation-some-hope-seen-in-aviation/
0
JapanGal
Mods fixed it. Ok now.
Truth though. Deregulate everything like the US stock markets and bank loaning system. Ouch
0
Kabukilover
This idiot does not know Japan and is just mouthing an old and preposterous formula--a cliche for all occasions.
Is corporate Japan a poor little victim tied down by an overwhelming Big Government? Do you feel sorry for poor misunderstood and over-regulated TEPCO? The fact is the corporations run Japan. Bureaucrats who are good little corporate friends get fat corporate managerial jobs. Guess what. If there is a lot of regulation in Japan it is because that is what the corporations want. Regulated are not only the corporations but also every aspect of Japanese life that helps the corporations keep their power.
That is the reality of Japan. Japan is a corporate state.
Now just five words about deregulation: Look at the United States. Regulation has brought nothing but corporate abuse and misery for working class Americans. Finally, it brought the meltdown of 2008 under George W. Bush.
Welcome to regulated Japan where medical care is the cheapest in the world, as opposed to the unregulated U.S. where it is the most expensive in the world.
Japan is not a cuddly social democracy. This is a corporate state. Everything is done for the corporations. But there is a prevailing sensibility of limits in this country. Japanese hubris in the 1980 wasn't like the American hubris leading up to the Wall Street crash of 2008, that would have doomed American and world capitalism without massive government bailouts.
When I say that there is a prevailing sensibility of limits, have to add there are gross breaches. Nuclear power is a big one. Whaling and similar pork barrel wastes are smaller breeches. But these are the breeches that the corporations want.
I think corporate culture in this country is deregulated enough. It already has a strangle hold on Japanese life from the time Japan's future wage slaves are in primary school.
Japan's problem's largely stems from the corporations' stranglehold on the people's lives--not only their working lives but also their private lives. That and Japan's self-imposed insularity.
Anyway, the depression of 2008 proved once and for all that so-called free market capitalism is a joke.
1
oikawa
As for the quote's purpose why do people think growth and deflation are necessarily good and bad respectively, and the goals themselves. Economists always forget the fact that the goal of a good economy is the benefit of the people, not achieving academic economic targets. If Japan is doing all right, which it certainly is for most people if you look around you in everyday life, and certainly compared to most other countries, perhaps economists should reconsider their values, and estimations of what is good and bad, and factor in the human factor more, especially when that is in fact the actual goal of a "good" economy.
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