There’s plenty of room for debate over the thesis of Noah Smith’s post at Bloomberg View on Japan’s recovery from its decades-long economic torpor—that Japan can serve as a model for anything but Japan. However, I found something very interesting. Based on the statistics presented in the post by Mr. Smith, over the last six years Japan’s unemployment rate, already very low, has declined even farther while its labor force participation rate has increased.
Especially when you take into account that Japanese industry is even more automated than our own, that’s an effective refutation of the claim by American futurists that there will be a near term end of work—that for the first time in history technological unemployment has become chronic.
It hasn’t happened in Japan. There’s a much better, obvious explanation: Japan organizes its trade very differently than we do. We’re doing things wrong.
A lot of technophilic commentors presume automation is like a fundamental force of nature, which allows them to brush aside things like culture and political differences inconvenient to their argument. The Japanese do many things differently than we do, some worse and some very much better.
Just to underscore that something of which most Americans are unaware is just how many new products are introduced every single year in Japan. Far, far more than in the U. S. Most flop but some succeed.
Dave, that’s a very important point. Japanese fads are measured in weeks and businesses must continuously develop new products to remain relevant. It’s an extremely competitive environment.
The rate at which large businesses that dominate their sectors develop new products is slow relative to smaller companies. There’s a simple reason for that. The status quo is good enough for them.
Most of the readers here probably don’t remember when Ma Bell had complete control of the telecommunications business. Broadband communications lines typically cost more than a grand a month and that was when $1,000 was a lot of money. Fax machines that AT&T would allow to be connected to their lines were very expensive. Few businesses and even fewer individuals owned them. The fastest modem communicating over ordinary telephone lines was 9600 baud and incredibly expensive. I’ve had remote computer connectivity since 1972 but I’m the only person I know who can say that.
That’s where we’d still be if we hadn’t broken up the Bell System. No smartphones, no cellphones, no high speed Internet, a few fax machines and modems, long distance calls would be so expensive you’d use alternatives like letter writing or telegrams. Businesses would use telex.
IMO big businesses are bad for the economy and it doesn’t matter what sector they’re in.
@Dave Schuler
Most of the readers here probably don’t remember when Ma Bell had complete control of the telecommunications business. …
I remember. There was an AT&T commercial for a reduced rate for a residential call. It was $5 for 3 minutes (or something like it), and you had to make it after 5 or 8PM. It was touted as a way for grandparents to stay in touch. It was a bargain at the time, but it was still expensive.
You rented your telephone, and most of them were hard-wired into the wall. For mobility, you got a long cord to the handset, but for the earlier phones, the cord to the handset was hard-wired, also.
I remember when products “made in Japan” were usually garbage.
I still do. It’s worth it.
We’ve lived in this house for 30 years. Over that period we lose cable and Internet connectivity several times a month for long or short periods. We’ve lost electrical power every couple of years. We lose cell connectivity fairly frequently, particularly when usage is heavy.
We’ve only lost our telephone land line once.
I still have two land-lines from AT&T. One is for work, but the other we probably should have gotten rid of some years back. I too do not remember the last time the landline went out.
Are you still renting the phone?
Yep.