Whoah, that really makes sense! It’s as if the BOJ is doing all they can, but the people refuse to cooperate.
I wonder, if that is the case, why wouldn’t the BOJ just print more money straight up, rather than relying on the interest rate?
Interesting, I always thought that taxes would be far higher there. I had been considering moving there since I have studied the language well enough for travel purposes, as well as to possibly cater to a possible career in animation / video games etc. (I would of course get the required education finished up here, but it would be nice to not be here if the economic sh*t majorly hits the fan, methinks).
Would be kind of cool if and of us managed to get there, start that LLC with 1 yen & tried to speed up the process of spreading libertarianism over there (via possibly translation services, or pahmplets, advertising, etc.). Would be quite the adventure, methinks.
If you earn less than $50K per ear, it’s 10% income tax deducted. National health insurance is optional. There is also a 5% sales tax. I don’t know about business income, captial gains, or payroll taxes.
Yeah, if we believe in the market, doesn’t it follow that our job as promoters of liberty is to figure out how to profit from filling people’s need to understand political economy better? Entrepreneurs ought to be our heroes.
I’m a translator myself, self-employed but don’t have an LLC. Trick for the LLC is, last I checked, you need two full-time Japanese employees.
Ah ha, that’s how they get ya.
I think it would be a good project, though, as despite searching through the site & via Google, I can’t seem to find any mention of possible austrian econ or Lvmi activity in japan, or any students there pursuing means to spread said information, which I find odd considering how keen the Japanese seem to be on saving money.
I think that alone automatically makes them smart enough, I think, to understand the absurdity of Keyenesian policy attempting to teach people “savings are bad”, which the people obviously disagree with regarding their government over there, & would enable them to see economics differently.
Of course, from my understanding, they are not entirley tolerant of foreigners, either, so maybe that is also a factor?
First off, from what I know the Japanese LOVE anything American. Just like we have idiots getting tattoos or wearing shirts with Japanese writing that they have no idea what it means, they have an obsession with T-shirts covered in broken English.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72581584@N00/3035633794/ (There used to be an entire website devoted to this, but i can’t find it now.)
As far as englightening Asia, that’s a great plan in my opinion. Jim Rogers has said Asia is the wave of the future. It seems that Asia has MUCH to gain by decoupling from us. They keep sending us their stuff, and we keep sending them promises to pay them down the road that are becoming increasingly impossible to fulfill.
Seriously, we import massive amounts of cars from them, right? What do we send back in return? Video games? Films?
I’m pretty sure there is essentially none. Japanese intellectuals in a field like economics will so strongly tend to take on the majority opinion that Austrianism never had much chance of catching on, that is, without anyone here to profess it in their language. Getting Meltdown translated into Japanese could do wonders, though. That would be my first priority if Tom and the publisher consented (why wouldn’t they?), and it’s probably a fairly simple matter if things like Tony’s Layguide made it over. Only problem is that it’s so USA-focused. I think Woods and others hold back from analyzing Japan because they just don’t know enough about it and its history, etc. The language problem is really prohibitive in some ways.
Their savings rate is down to 15% now, but entrepreneurship has a strong tradition in Japan, especially here in Osaka. Hmm, Osaka is also the comedy center of the country, so if we could get a Japanese comedian on board and do something akin to Woods’s Seinfeld-infused speeches that could be a grand slam. But maybe I’m dreaming.
They actually love foreign ideas, that’s why they’re so into Keynes. The thing is, they see the mainstream in the West (in any field) as the “victorious” school of thought, and it’s hard to drive them out of it.
Surely, surely. Now is a chance. The recession is starting to hit Japan hard due to the the strong yen making most exporters unprofitable for the past 8 months or so. People are getting laid off, bonuses are being cut (a cardinal sin in Japan, where bonuses are a large portion of annual salary), and people are cutting back on frills. I know they’re wondering what’s going on, because magazine and newspaper headlines frequently try to talk about the economy and help people understand the crisis. Every corporate annual report appeals to the financial crisis quite a bit.