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Japan's Economic Disaster: Real Wages Lowest Since 1990, Record Numbers Describe "Hard" Living Conditions
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
With so much attention rightly focused on China at the moment (see: Chinese Authorities Arrest Over 100 Human Rights Activists and Lawyers in Desperate Crackdown on Dissent), people aren’t paying enough attention to the budding economic calamity unfolding in Japan.
While “Abenomics” has succeeded in boosting the stock market and food prices, it has utterly failed to raise wages. In fact, wages adjusted for inflation have plunged to the lowest since 1990. As such, a record number of households now describe their living conditions as “somewhat hard” or “very hard.”
From Bloomberg:
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power vowing to drag Japan out of deflation and stagnation. His logic was that rising prices would drive higher salaries and increased consumption. More than two years on, prices are rising, but wages adjusted for inflation have sunk to the lowest since at least 1990.
A record 62 percent of Japanese households described their livelihoods as “hard” last year in a survey on incomes. A sales-tax increase in 2014 helped drive up living costs faster than wage gains. At the same time, the Bank of Japan’s quantitative easing drove down the currency, boosting the cost of imported energy.
Not that verifiable proof of failed economic policies will convince the central planners in Japan or anywhere else to change course. These people are simply dangerously insane and can’t help themselves.
In case you missed it the first time, here’s my most recent important post on Japan:
The Stock Market Myth and How the Japanese Middle Class is on the Precipice Thanks to Abenomics
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Go for it. More Skittles and Unicorns. More Cowbell.
WTF is going on here?
Nobody is responsible for anything anymore
But at this point, what does it matter anyhow, what?
Aaaaaaararrarrarrragaggagaggaggggagggghhhhhh!
Yes, that and Bonzai! Japan: fast internet, crappy economy, killer bees. Check again, I think the unicorn's puking!
If you don't see Obongo's hope and change spread all over these charts it means you're fucking imbecile.
Vote for Hillary!
WINNING!!!!
Forward!!!!
Obama and the progressive's dream scenario. More gubermint dependance for all!
If Japanese workers actually gave a fuck, they wouldn't be such tools.
Most of them work ridiculous hours with no OT for no benifit. Back in the day Japanese workers had salaried "jobs for life". Now a lot of workers only have part time jobs and still work as if they are a full time salary man.
I'm also almost certain the japanese definition of "hard living conditions" is that they can't go to the whore houses, drink at the pub or eat out as frrquently as they are traditionally used to...
Lower real wages were the goal of Abenomics. Not even the secret goal.
Japan is as deeply insolvent as Greece, and everyone there knows it. As with Greece, reduction in real wages is necessary to have any slim hope of avoiding collapse. (Spoiler alert: it's often required for deeply insolvent countries.) Japanese workers accept it more or less because they recognize the reality.
Some fun facts for anyone who just arrived from another planet: Japan is a resource-poor country whose industries have been partly hollowed out by low wage competition in China and Korea, and whose public debt is 200% of GDP. Japan formerly had a ridiculously over-valued currency and some of the highest wages in the world. What trend in real wages do you suppose one would expect in that circumstance?
Slowly circling the drain at first and then noticeably speeding up. Can you see the vortex yet, the drain pipe itself? Once it is plain view to all, when it can no longer be denied, then we set to paddling against the current, once we are sure it is futile, far too late....
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That about sums it up.
Japan is a non violent country even in the major cities , no fucked up road rage bull shit and no blacks playing the fucking knock out game. Things are going to hit the fan sooner than later world wide but when it does I take Japan over the racialy divided criminal extremly Violent US of queer ass Obama
You might want to study a little Japanese history if you want to see true depravity. There is little your imagination can conjure that was not done to fellow human beings (even if they were not of the master race) by this peaceful nation. Ask the Chinese about the Japanese pacifism.
Unlike each and every other colonial power, including the US.
While we would love to equate all death as equal given its final state...it is not. The Japanese were documented as doing some truly horrific things to people and not just isolated incidents...mass scale. All humans are capable of anything, but to go on a grand scale with common actions taken and participated in by thousands says something a little extra about specific cultures, a cultural social acceptance is required. I'm glad they seem to have gotten it mostly out of their system, but they deserve no special consideration. We can ALL go bat shit crazy at any moment......I'm on the edge now...
as always, 8-10 years of mid-20th century history (mis)used as a counter argument. The same false argument is heard the other way around" "if it wasn't for the US, you all would be speaking German". Freaking hate that line of false reasoning. More to the sociology of people than a few years of bizarre history....
Oldwood, I guess your five down-voters have never heard of Japan's Unit 731. Dissecting pregnant women alive without anesthesia. http://www.wanttoknow.info/a-Japan-Unit-731-tortured-thousands-lethal-ex....
"Unit 731, based in Harbin in northern China, conducted experiments on tens of thousands of mostly Chinese and Korean prisoners, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war. Some historians estimate up to 250,000 people were subjected to experiments. According to historical accounts, male and female prisoners, named "logs" by their torturers, were subjected to vivisection without anaesthesia after they had been deliberately infected with diseases such as typhus and cholera. Some had limbs amputated or organs removed. Leading members of the unit were secretly granted immunity from prosecution in return for giving US occupation forces access to years of biological warfare research. Some went on to occupy prestigious positions in the pharmaceutical industry, health ministry and academia."
And the Rape of Nanking (http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm):
"In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.
Filmed footage and still photographs taken by the Japanese themselves document the brutality. Smiling soldiers can be seen conducting bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitating them and displaying severed heads as souvenirs, and proudly standing among mutilated corpses. Some of the Chinese POWs were simply mowed down by machine-gun fire while others were tied-up, soaked with gasoline and burned alive.
After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness.
Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped, then had their bellies slit open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, after storming into a house and encountering a whole family, the Japanese forced Chinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, and brothers their sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch."
Japanese people born since then are of course not responsible for these atrocities, but they have been brutalized by the society that they have been raised in. Japan is a scary, violent place, where ugly things are hidden and where where press-control laws keep it that way. If you believe their crime statistics (their "high suicide rate" is largely murders-for-insurance, covered up), you might as well believe China's economic figures.
Point taken but I know a hell of a lot more about japanese history than you do. I am talking about the present not the past.
I'm actually willing to believe that you know a lot more about Japanese history than I do. But I think that (Western) people who are presently there are do not see current-day things; they do not read between the lines, and Japanese people hide things from them; Westerners who live there are clueless. I obsessively read articles about "hidden Japan"; about their mob, their untouchable caste, the Fukushima cleanup being done by unwilling members of that caste (as forced by the mafia), the role of Koreans; their fake crime stats; things like the article re the poor rice ball guy and articles about their horribly suffering (hidden, silent) working class. People who visit and live in Japan somehow typically do not see these things I've discovered, and Japanese people WILL NOT talk about them. I once asked a Japanese reporter (visiting our condo complex in CA) about the untouchable caste, and he was really angry and upset that I even knew that they existed. And today's Japanese society grows up in part out of the atrocities of WWII; the silence and denial there persist. Their press suppression laws are very, very powerful; Japan is a democracy in name only.
Most Japanese people are great human beings and suffer terribly under this system; it is a horrible waste but they are too frightened to rebel by exposing what is going on to outsiders; they know the consequences to themselves and their families would be hideous.
Watasino suma wa nijongin deska. iived there a long time, just got back speak Japanese. Fuck Abe and all the american puppet fuckers . The people are rightous and a hell of a lot smarter than americagin idiots. Japan should tell the USA to go straght to hell and cut that cord. Japan government might be Facist but not as Facist as the queer mother fucker in the white house.
For Goodness Sakes!! Where are the UNICORNS???
Japanese housing schemes.
https://catforehead.wordpress.com/
So I guess that Third Arrow.. backfired ?
Watch out for kamikaze and then give them directions to D.C.
We might think that ain't gonna happen. But Abe is busily rewritting history, WWII history that is. The way they're going, they gonna eventually blame the US for the humiliation of unconditional surrender. Not to mention the 2 atomic happy boom booms.
If Abe can harbor such deep seated dislike and disdain for the Chinese, Koreans etc, does anyone seriously believe he is an American ally ?
At least life is cheaper when you have no children.
cheap sadness will fill the emptiness
or some muslims from bum-countries
The yen dollar is getting sacrificed.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2015/06/japan-post-holdings-to-move-away-...
If Japan is a 'disaster', given their practically non-existent resource endowment, then that's actually a very good state of affairs for the USA and the rest of the industrialized world to emulate such standard-of-living wise.
Why would anyone invest in the real, working-and-goods-producing economy when stock speculation and overseas dividend-earning are MUCH more profitable and safer under cheap money...?
RESET coming in 3....2....1....
I like Japan and their food, people, etc. Too bad their greedy grubby politicans destroyed their nation.
Yes but the crime is who they listened to, They were just doing what the USA cocksukers told them to.
I calmy over look typing/spelling errors, but when someone has a typing/spelling error on the word Cocksucker, that's where I have to draw the line.
Just kidding, your assesment is correct.
Don't forget the Yakuza (organized crime). They have significant influence in everything that goes on in Japan. Probably much more than the Mafia has in Italy.
You'll discover that it's all by design courtesy of Nikon's Opening up China strategy if you bother to read the fine print.
all japan needs the most now is asian-muslim mass immigration
like the cherry on the cake
Would a psychopath be a more accurate definition to a central planner. Symptoms include e.g. by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior.
I want to know when the rest of the world,{ particularly the Asian markets} are going to start calling the Bank of Japan out on their blatant currency manipulation?
Abe and Kuroda should be hung by the neck until DEAD, for the destruction they've unleashed on the Japanese.
The fact that the BoJ is actively shorting gold contracts as they rise in value vs the Yen, to give the impression of low inflation to the Japanese public is HORRIFIC and UNCONSCIONABLE.
Any equity gains in the Japanese share markets(ponzi) are just that. The BoJ is doing this to hold down JGB yields, because the second the ponzi is exposed the Japanese bond market is going to explode. 300.00% debt GDP. sound familiar?
+1 Kyle Bass has been banging on this for how many years? The situation just keeps getting worse and is not sustainable.
Going to be a lot worse in Trayvonville when those EBTs stop working.
Japan is a brutal, brutal country. Here is an article about a guy who literally starved to death, because he was unable to conform to the social workers' demands (he was an alcoholic). They knew that he was starving to death, and he did, and they would not give him any food. Afterwards when they were asked why, they said that they felt they were following the rules by letting him starve to death. He wrote a diary in his last days describing his longing for a rice ball.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/asia/12japan.html?hp=&_r=0
KITAKYUSHU, Japan — In a thin notebook discovered along with a man’s partly mummified corpse this summer was a detailed account of his last days, recording his hunger pangs, his drop in weight and, above all, his dream of eating a rice ball, a snack sold for about $1 in convenience stores across the country.
“3 a.m. This human being hasn’t eaten in 10 days but is still alive,” he wrote. “I want to eat rice. I want to eat a rice ball.”
These were not the last words of a hiker lost in the wilderness, but those of a 52-year-old urban welfare recipient whose benefits had been cut off. And his case was not the first here."
I realize that the endlessly forgiving, over-helping, cosseting Christianity of (e.g.) Jimmy Carter can get noxious, but it sure as hell beats letting poor hopeless souls starve to death. Really any system/country/arrangement/belief system that doesn't let pathetic people literally starve to death (surrounded by wealth) looks pretty good in comparison.
I live a pretty decent life by jogging, reading classic books and writing essays, playing harmonica trading bitcoin and traveling. Admittedly probably not what most would enjoy doing but it keeps me happy.
You achieve happiness or satisfaction without consumption?
Heretic!
Japan had a high positive trade and current accounts. Lately their surplusses have follen almost negative particularly the trade one. They are trying to increase export by lowering labor costs. Unfortunately the rest of the world is doing the same and the excersise will fail because conditions will not change.
Look at the BoJ policy meeting last night. Those KOOKS are actually thinking about increasing their QE in September.
How in the FUCK is the Fed going to raise rates when the BoJ is thinking about increasing their ponzi scam? The number 1# trading partner with Japan is the USSA.
Its like a bad horror film where you find yourself screaming at the idiot telling him to NOT go into that room....and they go anyway, only to meet their brutal end. Maybe its only obvious if you aren't actually in the movie. I've been trying to set out the worst of the madness but none of us will escape it when it really breaks down.
I wonder if globalization hasn't resulted in global deflation due to wage suppression. Everyone is fighting against the next lowest bidder.
If wages are being suppressed then why are equity markets at all time highs? I somewhat agree with you BTW.
The thing that's destroying "price discovery" is being able to short the front end of commodities at high leverage.
There's NO way the sell side can physically deliver the actual commodity, so they settle in cash, because rates are low.
When interest rates rise they are signaling inflation or unease in the markets, and the cost of covering those paper contracts rises, because the sell side doesn't actually own the physical.
FWIW, I think we're days away from a bottom on these multiyear highs and lows across the board.
Low wage earners better not speak out because the "nail that sticks out gets the hammer!"
:)
Actual work has kind of gone out of style, so many employers will take a fair amount of abuse from their employees if they actually produce. Corporations are too dumb to worry about productivity as their efforts are spent in trying to buy up their competition rather than out compete them, or simply rely on marketing to sell what they really can't provide. Seldom can you buy anything that actually does what is advertised, much like the disappointment in the sandwich of which you purchased from their signage images. We have learned or been conditioned (indoctrinated) to accept this crap and feel damned lucky if it works at all. It seems seems like everything is winding down. We keep thinking it will explode, but in reality it looks like it is more likely to simply coast to a stop, with each downhill giving us the illusion of picking up speed and energy, to hit the bottom of the grade and watch as with each one we are getting slower and slower. At some point I think it will just stop and I'll be looking at it expectantly for it to roll on and it just STOPS.
Since so many elites have more concern for Mother Gaia than motherhood like the Sierra Club to Planned Parenthood, and feminists, proliferating more humans is not such a priority in the West/Japan as it it has been. You can chart every sort of economic course you want for a country but without substantial population growth there will be no economic growth. Ask any non lib economics prof.
When in the world some good news come out from Japan so I could quit including in my comments about Japan this same link to the post about Japanese collapse published over 6 months ago and still actual.
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/japan-miracle-that-wa...