Re: [Pen-l] Democrats to placate Republicans on recovery plan

[Martin Hart-Landsberg <marty@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As a follow up to my past post on Japan, here is a quote from a October 
2008 article, 
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hamish-mcrae/hamish-mcrae-can-we-avoid-the-years-of-stagnation-suffered-by-japan-976792.html


"The aftermath of that bubble has been a millstone round the neck of the 
Japanese economy. True it is still the second largest in the world and 
true, Tokyo is still the sprawling, clean, efficient, safe and shiny 
city it was 20 years ago. The great Japanese companies such as Toyota, 
Sony and Honda still prosper. But the bottom line is that there has been 
virtually no overall increase in Japanese living standards for 20 years 
and that inequality has risen sharply.

You don't see it in central Tokyo, where the smart salary workers of the 
giant companies commute every day, but I am told by Japanese friends 
that there is real hidden poverty in a way that they find shocking. 
Homelessness has increased, one third of jobs are part-time, and the 
thing they found most shocking is that quite a lot of people have no 
health insurance because they cannot pay the low social security charges 
to maintain their cover."



Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Feb 4, 2009, at 2:33 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
>
> > like Japan during the 1990s? except on a global scale?
>
> That really wasn't all *that* terrible.
>
> Doug
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