Comments on: Japanese Earthquake Looming

By: DLS

DLS — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:45:27 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has featured articles with the "dial gauge" graphs about seats won or lost.

In advance of something similar from the Economist (I still wonder if it will be a lead story), look here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125160894574169...

By: DLS

DLS — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:40:50 +0000

Finally, someone else noticed the Japanese situation.

Just don't believe this is a world-wide desire for "Change," related to lefty Latin America, or that the new Japanese guy is the Japanese Obama, etc. (There are problems associated with pleasing unions and other interest groups, though.)

* * *

"almost like a Republican winning in Georgia in the 1930s"

Or imagine that JFK and liberal advances in the early 1960s never happened, that the GOP ran thingseverywhere through the Sixties and through the 1970s, but radicalism never happened, and then the Dems scored big time in the 1980 election, with sentiment and results like 1980 and 1994.

By: Patrick E

Patrick E — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:44:08 +0000

In case you missed it the results were a sweep for the opposition. Only open question now is if they will get 2/3rds of the seats.

Should be interesting to watch. I don't know if we can really appreciate the level of dominance the LDP had, it's almost like a Republican winning in Georgia in the 30's.

By: Leonidas

Leonidas — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:44:34 +0000

Father Time, its not really that hard to follow as to why.

The Japanese companies have traditionally promised life time employment to their workers. In Japan you generally don't get fired for poor performance you get shuttled off to an unimportant job. Additionally many women are not part of the workforce as traditionally they worked as “office ladies” aka OL with secretarial duties until they got married at which time they left the company. This freed up jobs for male workers. Only recently has this begun to change. Imagine in the US if 80% of the women in the workforce retired and were not considered in the unemployment figures….our unemployment figures would drop pretty dramatically.

By: Father_Time

Father_Time — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:57:50 +0000

It's interesting that Japan's deficit is 170% GDP, but their unemployment is only 5.7%. While the United States deficit is 80% GDP, yet our unemployment is 10%.

By: Leonidas

Leonidas — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:23:39 +0000

The reason the LDP is in jeopardy has little or nothing to do with its foreign policies, the big issue in this election is the liberalizing of laws regarding temporary workers. Japanese employment was for decades based on lifetime employment of a “salaryman” by one company. Easing these restriction enabled companies to better adjust to short term economic problems and maintain competitiveness, but it undermined that core structural element of society and made japanese “salarymen” threatened the feeling of security of the middle class. If there is one thing dangerous to mess with in Japanese society, its security. The LDP will be facing a huge backlash, whether they did the right thing or not. Being the major Conservative party in Japan wont save them when they use a progressive idea. I would expect the Center-right and Center-left to emerge much stronger after this is done.