Pound sign (was Re: the Telephone Test)

[Earl H. Kinmonth]

[Assertion that major monetary units are based on weight. Observation
that yen means circular.  Yen represents stronger economy than those
with monetary units named for weight.  Would be economist's assertion
of Japanese economic inefficiency.]

>There you go, spouting nonsense over the net. According to _The
------------------|
I'm impressed at your level of expertise on economic issues, especially
US-Japan comparisons. How did you arrive it at? You seem to know so
much more than I do. My feeble background is BA (economics) 1968, BBA
(corporate finance), PhD Japanese History (1975). Graduate study
University of Tokyo (economics) 1971-1974, 1981-1982, Kobe University
1984-1985 (economics).

[table deleted]
>
>The numbers tell the tale: by any of these measures, the USA was the

Your faith in numbers is touching. It is also naive. The counting
methods used for developing "hours worked" (actually compensated hours)
tend to inflate Japanese data. Various breaks and non-work time that is
not included in US data is included in the Japanese. Also, the
compensation system is different. White-collar workers up through
management levels are compensated by hourly calculation.

>most productive of the countries; Japan was either the least
>productive or the second least.
>
>Why then do the Japanese do so well in spite of their low
>productivity? Well, though they have low productivity per head, they
>work more hours. Furthermore, while most of their economy is

I seriously doubt this.  Based on six years life in Japan, I never had the
sense that Japanese WORKED long hours.  They are often at the workplace for
long hours, but the fraction of the time spent working is considerably less
than 100 percent, especially in small business, say seventy percent or so.

>amazingly inefficient, their manufacturing sector is anything but.
------|
Compared to what?  The retail sector is certainly less efficient measured
by price of goods.  Whether it is less efficient in an economic sense
depends on the value you attach to service and convenience.

>Note that I'm not putting the Japanese down; the growth figures for
>some sectors of their economy are rather impressive. (No, I don't

GDP (gross domestic product): four times US growth rates for
1950s-1970s, about twice for the 1980s.

>have the figures handy.) But the idealization of the Japanese economy
>that one sees so often is just plain bullshit.

Do I detect a bit of bruised nationalistic sentiment here?

>Followups have been directed to talk.politics.misc.

After you have had the last word? No way! If you find the
subject matter inappropriate to the original group, you should have
posted your own drivel to talk.politics.misc in the first place.

>Bill                            { uunet | novavax } !twwells!bill


Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
Davis, California  95616
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