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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On December 31 2014 17:52 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2014 05:58 oneofthem wrote:
it's a pretty substantial increase, with a further increase to 10% written into law at the time the 8% increase was made. there's psychological effect to it, and with already stagnant income making people poorer and letting them know about it too led to a spiral. it also works with a deflationary spiral to depress spending and investment. various articles on this you can google
the link between the tax and the result, -2% quarterly contraction on -5% domestic consumption, is very strong. you are going off theory but here we have empirical data, and data > theory. Do you have a source for that? All those reasons except the further increase to 10% were also the case in NL. In fact we had the tax increase while we were in a recession caused by our housing market and our government had an austerity policy. I'm not just going off theory I'm going off my experience closer to home. Anyway I'm not doubting the effect it had the quarter before and after the tax increase. Since consumption was a lot higher before as well so a dip after it is only expected. What I don't really believe is that it's still causing a sluggish economy now considering all his other fiscal stimulus.
does NL have heavy private sector debt too? japan has been on a decades long deflationary spiral
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On January 01 2015 00:14 AutoEngineer wrote:
However corporate profits mean almost nothing to Japan's domestic economy.
Most Japanese companies (except a minority) have their manufacturing overseas like Thailand and Vietnam.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what some of you are thinking when you say it wasn't really Japan's lost 2 decades bla bla bla. Yes from the 1990s until now, Japan's economy has been stagnant with barely (if any) growth.
How is this not bad? Real wages have dropped, savings rate has turned negative, quality of life is falling. The Japanese are just beginning to feel the effects of all this, on top of more expensive electricity, higher costs of living in general. Japanese people are more and more reluctant to spend, not just because of low inflation but also because they are struggling to buy what they want.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has drastically lowered the quality of life of Japanese, however these are not factored into quality of life measurements. This is because the world is very pro-nuclear power due to General Electric and Co. These gangsters will do anything to lobby the bodies which conduct quality of life measurements and compile statistics to make it seem that nuclear accidents don;t do much to health and quality of life, when it actually does.
Fukushima and Chernobyl are two nuclear disasters which should never be forgotten. It's very sad to see that the majority of fish in Japan are probably heavily contaminated with nuclear radiation but fish is a staple in the Japanese diet. Yes, the economy matters less, health and quality of life matters much more than the economy.
I know you're always down on Japan but a lot of this is exaggerated or nonsensical.
It's probably not worth my time to argue because you would be down on Japan regardless. When Japanese companies do badly, you'll say it's evidence Japan is collapsing. When Japanese companies do well, you say it means nothing.
But I will say that I live in Japan and I think you do not, because otherwise you would know that "quality of life is falling" is an exaggerated statement at best. But I guess you know that too because otherwise you'd have more than resorting to cheap shots about Fukushima and you would be aware that they catch fish from more places than just around the leaking reactor. I don't know about the rest of the world, but 2/3 of Japanese are opposed to restarting nuclear power plants. They are quite interested in the effects of Fukushima on quality of life, so if it were having a real and measurable effect, they would include it in the models.
It's the New Year, man. Relax a little and try to enjoy yourself.
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On January 01 2015 00:17 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2014 17:52 RvB wrote:On December 31 2014 05:58 oneofthem wrote:
it's a pretty substantial increase, with a further increase to 10% written into law at the time the 8% increase was made. there's psychological effect to it, and with already stagnant income making people poorer and letting them know about it too led to a spiral. it also works with a deflationary spiral to depress spending and investment. various articles on this you can google
the link between the tax and the result, -2% quarterly contraction on -5% domestic consumption, is very strong. you are going off theory but here we have empirical data, and data > theory. Do you have a source for that? All those reasons except the further increase to 10% were also the case in NL. In fact we had the tax increase while we were in a recession caused by our housing market and our government had an austerity policy. I'm not just going off theory I'm going off my experience closer to home. Anyway I'm not doubting the effect it had the quarter before and after the tax increase. Since consumption was a lot higher before as well so a dip after it is only expected. What I don't really believe is that it's still causing a sluggish economy now considering all his other fiscal stimulus. does NL have heavy private sector debt too? japan has been on a decades long deflationary spiral
We have heavy private sector debt and a lot of savings at the same time.
The debt is mainly in residential mortgages because of government subsidies making it attractive to hold as much mortgage debt as possible for as long as possible. A Nice article about our private debt from our statistics bureau, it's in english.
private debt
On the other hand we have a lot of savings in our pension funds. Around €1.1 trillion iirc. A lot of that money gets invested in foreign countries though.
Japan isn't actually in a deflationary spiral anymore though right? Just a long periode of very low inflation.
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On January 01 2015 00:14 AutoEngineer wrote:
However corporate profits mean almost nothing to Japan's domestic economy.
Most Japanese companies (except a minority) have their manufacturing overseas like Thailand and Vietnam.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what some of you are thinking when you say it wasn't really Japan's lost 2 decades bla bla bla. Yes from the 1990s until now, Japan's economy has been stagnant with barely (if any) growth.
How is this not bad? Real wages have dropped, savings rate has turned negative, quality of life is falling. The Japanese are just beginning to feel the effects of all this, on top of more expensive electricity, higher costs of living in general. Japanese people are more and more reluctant to spend, not just because of low inflation but also because they are struggling to buy what they want.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has drastically lowered the quality of life of Japanese, however these are not factored into quality of life measurements. This is because the world is very pro-nuclear power due to General Electric and Co. These gangsters will do anything to lobby the bodies which conduct quality of life measurements and compile statistics to make it seem that nuclear accidents don;t do much to health and quality of life, when it actually does.
Fukushima and Chernobyl are two nuclear disasters which should never be forgotten. It's very sad to see that the majority of fish in Japan are probably heavily contaminated with nuclear radiation but fish is a staple in the Japanese diet. Yes, the economy matters less, health and quality of life matters much more than the economy.
I feel like I am getting baited here heavily...
'How is this not bad'? Is anyone arguing that Japan has not performed suboptimally in the last 30 years? No. But the comparisons are Germany in the 30s, Soviets in the 80s, South East Asians in the 90s and Europeans now. Compared to all those cases the Japanese are (a) living longer (b) still richer (c) still pay almost nothing on their debt.
The only ones who handled a liquidity crisis are the Americans and (a) they have an inbuilt bias towards consumption (b) the population growth thanks to immigration continues and (c) for now its still the most dynamic economy in terms of innovation
Even your vaunted Koreans are still poorer, and live shorter lives than the Japanese. Although I am sure once they annex North Korea with its 'treasure trove' of natural resources that the Communists on the verge of collapse were too stupid to actually exploit its going to be party time.
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On January 01 2015 13:53 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2015 00:14 AutoEngineer wrote:
However corporate profits mean almost nothing to Japan's domestic economy.
Most Japanese companies (except a minority) have their manufacturing overseas like Thailand and Vietnam.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what some of you are thinking when you say it wasn't really Japan's lost 2 decades bla bla bla. Yes from the 1990s until now, Japan's economy has been stagnant with barely (if any) growth.
How is this not bad? Real wages have dropped, savings rate has turned negative, quality of life is falling. The Japanese are just beginning to feel the effects of all this, on top of more expensive electricity, higher costs of living in general. Japanese people are more and more reluctant to spend, not just because of low inflation but also because they are struggling to buy what they want.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has drastically lowered the quality of life of Japanese, however these are not factored into quality of life measurements. This is because the world is very pro-nuclear power due to General Electric and Co. These gangsters will do anything to lobby the bodies which conduct quality of life measurements and compile statistics to make it seem that nuclear accidents don;t do much to health and quality of life, when it actually does.
Fukushima and Chernobyl are two nuclear disasters which should never be forgotten. It's very sad to see that the majority of fish in Japan are probably heavily contaminated with nuclear radiation but fish is a staple in the Japanese diet. Yes, the economy matters less, health and quality of life matters much more than the economy. I feel like I am getting baited here heavily... 'How is this not bad'? Is anyone arguing that Japan has not performed suboptimally in the last 30 years? No. But the comparisons are Germany in the 30s, Soviets in the 80s, South East Asians in the 90s and Europeans now. Compared to all those cases the Japanese are (a) living longer (b) still richer (c) still pay almost nothing on their debt. The only ones who handled a liquidity crisis are the Americans and (a) they have an inbuilt bias towards consumption (b) the population growth thanks to immigration continues and (c) for now its still the most dynamic economy in terms of innovation Even your vaunted Koreans are still poorer, and live shorter lives than the Japanese. Although I am sure once they annex North Korea with its 'treasure trove' of natural resources that the Communists on the verge of collapse were too stupid to actually exploit its going to be party time.
When you say "poorer" you're being vague. By PPP GDP/capita terms South Korea and Japan are about equal, and South Korea will surpass Japan in nominal GDP/capita terms by 2020 according to most forecasts.
Furthermore, the minimum wage in South Korea is higher than that of Japan.
You're joking when you said that the Japanese are richer than Europeans right? Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, British, Italians, etc are all "richer" than Japanese.
Also living longer does not mean better health. It could mean elderly people's lives are being prolonged artificially through more medical treatment.
The average Japanese person is getting poorer and poorer and the quality of life index of South Korea is higher than Japan's.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
go back to posting about north korea's top 3 oil reserves. this is not fun
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On January 01 2015 13:53 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2015 00:14 AutoEngineer wrote:
However corporate profits mean almost nothing to Japan's domestic economy.
Most Japanese companies (except a minority) have their manufacturing overseas like Thailand and Vietnam.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what some of you are thinking when you say it wasn't really Japan's lost 2 decades bla bla bla. Yes from the 1990s until now, Japan's economy has been stagnant with barely (if any) growth.
How is this not bad? Real wages have dropped, savings rate has turned negative, quality of life is falling. The Japanese are just beginning to feel the effects of all this, on top of more expensive electricity, higher costs of living in general. Japanese people are more and more reluctant to spend, not just because of low inflation but also because they are struggling to buy what they want.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has drastically lowered the quality of life of Japanese, however these are not factored into quality of life measurements. This is because the world is very pro-nuclear power due to General Electric and Co. These gangsters will do anything to lobby the bodies which conduct quality of life measurements and compile statistics to make it seem that nuclear accidents don;t do much to health and quality of life, when it actually does.
Fukushima and Chernobyl are two nuclear disasters which should never be forgotten. It's very sad to see that the majority of fish in Japan are probably heavily contaminated with nuclear radiation but fish is a staple in the Japanese diet. Yes, the economy matters less, health and quality of life matters much more than the economy. I feel like I am getting baited here heavily... 'How is this not bad'? Is anyone arguing that Japan has not performed suboptimally in the last 30 years? No. But the comparisons are Germany in the 30s, Soviets in the 80s, South East Asians in the 90s and Europeans now. Compared to all those cases the Japanese are (a) living longer (b) still richer (c) still pay almost nothing on their debt. The only ones who handled a liquidity crisis are the Americans and (a) they have an inbuilt bias towards consumption (b) the population growth thanks to immigration continues and (c) for now its still the most dynamic economy in terms of innovation Even your vaunted Koreans are still poorer, and live shorter lives than the Japanese. Although I am sure once they annex North Korea with its 'treasure trove' of natural resources that the Communists on the verge of collapse were too stupid to actually exploit its going to be party time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#IMF_estimates_between_2010_and_2019
And
Life expectancy in SK is also higher than the US or UK and almost the same as the Netherlands. Japan is the outlier, rather than SK being low. Get it the right way round.
So yeah, nearly equal PPP and SK life expectancy is normal rather than unusual like Japan's.
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Japan probably reached full development and has been stagnant because an economy does not go up any further.
Obviously an economy cannot grow indefinitely, though economists and politicians like to think otherwise, or at least make an exception for the short term.
All other countries can only hope to reach this stage.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On January 01 2015 03:24 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2015 00:17 oneofthem wrote:On December 31 2014 17:52 RvB wrote:On December 31 2014 05:58 oneofthem wrote:
it's a pretty substantial increase, with a further increase to 10% written into law at the time the 8% increase was made. there's psychological effect to it, and with already stagnant income making people poorer and letting them know about it too led to a spiral. it also works with a deflationary spiral to depress spending and investment. various articles on this you can google
the link between the tax and the result, -2% quarterly contraction on -5% domestic consumption, is very strong. you are going off theory but here we have empirical data, and data > theory. Do you have a source for that? All those reasons except the further increase to 10% were also the case in NL. In fact we had the tax increase while we were in a recession caused by our housing market and our government had an austerity policy. I'm not just going off theory I'm going off my experience closer to home. Anyway I'm not doubting the effect it had the quarter before and after the tax increase. Since consumption was a lot higher before as well so a dip after it is only expected. What I don't really believe is that it's still causing a sluggish economy now considering all his other fiscal stimulus. does NL have heavy private sector debt too? japan has been on a decades long deflationary spiral We have heavy private sector debt and a lot of savings at the same time. The debt is mainly in residential mortgages because of government subsidies making it attractive to hold as much mortgage debt as possible for as long as possible. A Nice article about our private debt from our statistics bureau, it's in english. private debtOn the other hand we have a lot of savings in our pension funds. Around €1.1 trillion iirc. A lot of that money gets invested in foreign countries though. Japan isn't actually in a deflationary spiral anymore though right? Just a long periode of very low inflation.
well we are still dealing with hard data of -5% domestic consumption after the tax increase. various factors may contribute to comparative difference between europe and japan, including culture and demographics, but the fact is that the tax increase led to depressed consumption and economic slowdown.
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Can't speak for the economy but healthwise its definitely not artificial inflation through medical care. That's important but hardly the primary case when you adjust for it and compare it to other countries with similar levels of healthcare.
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Canada11349 Posts
Also living longer does not mean better health. It could mean elderly people's lives are being prolonged artificially through more medical treatment.
What do even mean by this? That's just as true if life expectancy is 50, but medical treatment 'artificially prolongs' their lives to 55. When life expectancy goes up then better health at an older age is exactly what happens. Medical treatment does not usually prolong people's lives at deaths door for forty years. It means a significant portion of the population is living healthily into their 60's and maybe even 70's before sharply dropping off. Those that live to their 90's are typically very spry in their 80's. And if you argue the opposite, then that sword cuts the same way for anyone else with a modern healthcare system as it does for the Japanese.
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I dot know why I started typing up a reply to AutoEngineer, now he's arguing that living longer is bad for you too. You win AutoEngineer, Koreans the master race will take over the world sometime in 2100 powered by the world's most richest resources base, North Korea.
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On January 01 2015 19:52 Lonyo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2015 13:53 Sub40APM wrote:On January 01 2015 00:14 AutoEngineer wrote:
However corporate profits mean almost nothing to Japan's domestic economy.
Most Japanese companies (except a minority) have their manufacturing overseas like Thailand and Vietnam.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what some of you are thinking when you say it wasn't really Japan's lost 2 decades bla bla bla. Yes from the 1990s until now, Japan's economy has been stagnant with barely (if any) growth.
How is this not bad? Real wages have dropped, savings rate has turned negative, quality of life is falling. The Japanese are just beginning to feel the effects of all this, on top of more expensive electricity, higher costs of living in general. Japanese people are more and more reluctant to spend, not just because of low inflation but also because they are struggling to buy what they want.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has drastically lowered the quality of life of Japanese, however these are not factored into quality of life measurements. This is because the world is very pro-nuclear power due to General Electric and Co. These gangsters will do anything to lobby the bodies which conduct quality of life measurements and compile statistics to make it seem that nuclear accidents don;t do much to health and quality of life, when it actually does.
Fukushima and Chernobyl are two nuclear disasters which should never be forgotten. It's very sad to see that the majority of fish in Japan are probably heavily contaminated with nuclear radiation but fish is a staple in the Japanese diet. Yes, the economy matters less, health and quality of life matters much more than the economy. I feel like I am getting baited here heavily... 'How is this not bad'? Is anyone arguing that Japan has not performed suboptimally in the last 30 years? No. But the comparisons are Germany in the 30s, Soviets in the 80s, South East Asians in the 90s and Europeans now. Compared to all those cases the Japanese are (a) living longer (b) still richer (c) still pay almost nothing on their debt. The only ones who handled a liquidity crisis are the Americans and (a) they have an inbuilt bias towards consumption (b) the population growth thanks to immigration continues and (c) for now its still the most dynamic economy in terms of innovation Even your vaunted Koreans are still poorer, and live shorter lives than the Japanese. Although I am sure once they annex North Korea with its 'treasure trove' of natural resources that the Communists on the verge of collapse were too stupid to actually exploit its going to be party time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_projected_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#IMF_estimates_between_2010_and_2019 And Life expectancy in SK is also higher than the US or UK and almost the same as the Netherlands. Japan is the outlier, rather than SK being low. Get it the right way round. So yeah, nearly equal PPP and SK life expectancy is normal rather than unusual like Japan's.
Yes...Japan's is unusual...because its ...higher.
Thats like saying 'Norway's GDP PPP is unusual'. Its literally the only way you could frame it to make it sound suspect instead of something to aspire to.
Japan handled their crisis better than the European countries that are in a crisis like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece.
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On January 02 2015 04:26 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +Also living longer does not mean better health. It could mean elderly people's lives are being prolonged artificially through more medical treatment. What do even mean by this? That's just as true if life expectancy is 50, but medical treatment 'artificially prolongs' their lives to 55. When life expectancy goes up then better health at an older age is exactly what happens. Medical treatment does not usually prolong people's lives at deaths door for forty years. It means a significant portion of the population is living healthily into their 60's and maybe even 70's before sharply dropping off. Those that live to their 90's are typically very spry in their 80's. And if you argue the opposite, then that sword cuts the same way for anyone else with a modern healthcare system as it does for the Japanese.
I think he's referring to the fact that Japan rates very poorly compared to other OECD countries in self-reported surveys of health. OECD methodology admits that cultural bias can and in Japan's case probably plays a big biased role, but across all countries is a fairly good measure of life expectancy and quality of life in a combined function. It fits with his narrative of Japanese living long and unhappy lives, even though japanese self-rate their happiness separately as slightly above the OECD average.
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What I'm saying is that a higher life expectancy is not equivalent to a higher quality of life.
Also here is a map displaying air pollution information in East Asia:
![[image loading]](http://oi57.tinypic.com/2vbo4ld.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://oi58.tinypic.com/2mxr66c.jpg)
You can see Korea has better air quality.
Not only that but Japan has its food contaminated by nuclear radiation.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
you must not eat bananas since it's radioactive
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The OP says in that OP that he's white.
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come on.
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6USrJ_CAAAAjbe.png)
![[image loading]](http://soerenkern.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/muslims-in-germany-stresemann.png)
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EPT
