Re: Re: Japan's Debt

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie writes:>>>You are right with regard to the Great Depression in the
30s, but today's Japan does not have "extreme unemployment," which has been
one of the reasons why we haven't seen working-class revolts yet. Hardships
have mainly hit new women college graduates, salarymen nearing the
retirement age, small shop & factory owners & workers, etc., I think.<<<

I wrote: >>of course, unemployment doesn't have to be overt (it can involve
hiring people not to work) while it doesn't always stimulate revolt (since
it might be sublimated into alcoholism, etc.) I've also heard that Japanese
unemployment stats are not strictly comparable to US stats, so that
Japanese unemployment looks relatively good.<<

Yoshie responded: >... here's what I found on the net:
>(A) Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Comparative Civilian Labor Force
Statistics, Ten Countries, 1959-1996," at
<http://www.itcilo.it/english/actrav/telearn/global/ilo/seura/uscompar.htm>...

>(B) Nobuhito Kishi, "Lies, Damned Lies: The Real Story of Unemployment in
Japan," at <http://www.nira.go.jp/publ/review/96winter/kishi.html>, ...

>Looking at A, the picture doesn't look so bad; B, in contrast, gives you
a horror story ... Which is right?  Tell me what you think.<

Looking at A, I thought one way to correct for differences of measurement
technique not captured by the BLS folks (but mentioned in B) and also the
structural differences between economies (since different economies have
different amounts of structural unemployment and labor-power market
institutions) was to look at the changes in unemployment in the various
countries _relative to_ the average unemployment rate for each country over
the 1959-96 period. This shows how unemployment has risen relative to what
a country is "used to." In fact, for political analysis, this seems useful:
a country that has suffered 6 percent unemployment for a long time is more
likely to suffer from political unrest if unemployment rises to 10 percent
than would a country that has had 9 percent unemployment over a long time.

It's interesting that in my graph, Japan's experience isn't that different
from that of W. Europe, Canada, or Australia. It is very different from the
US -- or from Sweden, where the ratio equals about 3. Of course, whereas in
W. Europe, Canada, and Australia, the rise in unemployment was due to
"self-inflicted" neoliberal policies, the one in Japan is due to the
popping of the Bubble Economy, which was not something policy-makers wanted.

The discussion in B is pretty convincing: the unemployment rate in Japan is
really higher than the official statistics indicate. That fits with my guess.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine