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Japan Plans To Merge Major Science Bodies
ananyo writes "In its battle against a sluggish economy, Japan's government is gearing up to make cost savings through a root-and-branch reform of the country's science system, merging some of its most prominent research organizations. Plans approved by the government's cabinet would consolidate the RIKEN network of basic-research laboratories with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) — the national funding body. But with few details about the timing, potential cost savings or full implications of the change, many researchers are concerned that it could be a recipe for harsh funding cuts and even greater bureaucracy."
Merging science bodies. Sounds kinky.
Better known as 318230.
... the Japanese do not need foreigners to buy up their national debt
Over 90% of their national debt is purchased by the Japanese themselves !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Japan should merge the Nuclear Science department with the Zoology group.
What could possibly go wrong?
Ladies and gents, roman_mir has solved Japan's economic problems in a single Slashdot post!
When Japanese do science ... they really do science !
Or... are they?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
This sound a lot like some of the suggestions posted here for what the US needs to do, so I think he might have not just saved Japan, but saved the whole world! If economists working for world governments knew as much as the libertarians on slashdot, think of what the world would be like!
Great Intellect...
Japan has the 3th largest economy in the world. They are hard workers, have excellent education, are very smart and highly motivated. They will do fine. Just like they always have.
Maybe Japan has a stagnant economy because like the U.S. or Germany, it already is one of the most developed countries in the world. Perhaps the focus should be on building economies that don't require perpetual growth in order to sustain a high quality of life for all citizens. Perpetual growth is impossible. Even with new technologies and innovation, there are only so many resources on this planet.
Japan followed the Keynesian playbook and all they have to show for it is a perpetually stagnant economy with a debt to GDP ratio of over 200%.
Indeed. Japan has had a stagnant economy since the mid 90's, despite huge levels of spending. In the 2000's, business magazines wrote articles about "Japan's Lost Decade". Now it's becoming Japan's lost decades.
I remember when experts were telling us in the 80's that Japan's economic model... high government spending, high subsidies and protectionism for domestic industries, the government picking winners and losers... was the future, and that the US would be left behind if we didn't adopt it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Keynesians are not economists, and real economists predicted economic collapse DECADES in advance, at the moment when Nixon took US (and thus the world) off the gold standard.
Keynesians have no predicting power at all, their 'predictions' are akin to their 'solutions' - start wars, even if with aliens.
Japanese economy stagnated awfully, with their productivity prices should have been falling hard and instead they either had stagnating prices or even some rising prices.
Japan's population problem is not worse than of others, Japan needs strong money to buy commodities, which they lack naturally, and if Japanese companies feel they must sell more in nominal terms, they shouldn't be attacking the currency and devaluing it, they should be dropping prices.
You probably are completely ignorant on the fact, that for companies to sell more in devalued dollars is worse than to sell more with reduced prices while money is appreciating - the earnings would buy more and competing would be easier.
h. Another moron wh
- Oh, just got to that part.
Goodbye.
You can't handle the truth.
It's not what "Japan's comparative advantage is", which is obvious - their high tech, their cars, medicine, etc.
It's what other countries can offer as competitive advantage to Japan, which is also obvious - raw materials, energy, probably food.
If Japan can't compete in terms of reduced regulations, because they are not free enough from their government in their culture, then they should at least be competing with their money - rate of return on investments.
China gained everything, the entire economy, because others are bringing their capital investments into the country.
Japan would also have huge inflow of investment capital if they allowed their money to appreciate, but their gov't wont, so after 20 years they really need to rethink this policy of strong gov't and weak people.
You can't handle the truth.
I can honestly say this is not going to work. The working style at NIMS and RIKEN are completely different, and their administration is completely incompatible. This will likely cause headaches all over. Also, one organization does not improve communication between the scientists. I found at RIKEN that the one group was not allowed to talk to the other group at RIKEN in fear one would be copying or taking up time of the other.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Your post makes no sense. First you say they need to stop with Keynesian economics, then you go on about stopping them and their ability to print money. Which is a central keynesian ideal. So which is it?
Oddly Japan seems to be doing fine after learning from their housing bubble in the 90's, which the US didn't learn from. And you believe japanese unemployment is a problem? At 4.3%? Wait, let me guess, you're the same type of person who believes that when it was the same during Bush's term it was disastrous, but during Obama's 10% it was perfectly okay.
Give your head a shake.
Om, nomnomnom...
I worked for CSIRO(The Australian government run science organization) as a computer monkey and before the recent government meddling they produced a LOT for the size of the org. (we aren’t the US) The cross communication lead to a lot breakthroughs. Eg A medical researcher was talking to a friend working on hydraulics, noticed the way he has been joining the hydraulic lines and got the idea to do the same thing for major high pressure arteries. It was radical for its time and it worked, took off big time after trials. (don’t know if its still done that way.) This may not be a bad thing if they take it seriously and really invest.
I agree Japan is too far in debt, but the 200% number everyone likes to bandy around is exaggerated, as it includes inter-agency borrowing. The net debt/GDP figure is something like 130%.
Japan's inflation rate is -0.2% and its unemployment is 4.5%. They need to create more money to invest in technology and the advance of knowledge, because that is what improves survival fitness by better enabling prediction and adaptation to sudden catastrophic change.
Japan needs to rebuild their infrastructure in many places, so they need to allow their currency to appreciate, so that more investments would be put into it, so they could buy more, and they need to stop listening the insane Keynesian charlatans, who really caused their economy to stagnate for 20 years. Nobody should be bailed out and nobody should be protected from rising currency with government intervention. Having currency fall looks good on a quarterly statement due to more sales in devalued currency, but it's terrible for the actual citizens and consumers, who have rising prices because the government destroys the money.
You'll be happy to hear that the Yen has been running record highs for many months. It's probably reduced the costs of their recent jump in fossil fuel use (following the post-Fukushima shutdown of nuclear power), but hasn't been all that good for their unemployment rate.
The myth of Japan's failure.
However, they have managed this prosperity by going into debt (borrowing from the future). Who knows how long it can keep going.
As I've heard it put, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Debt does matter. Money represents some fraction of the wealth in the economy. If a currency loses its credibility as a store of value, well... the the Germans in the 1920s knew how that went.
However... if a country can maintain price stability in the face of massive debt, that could probably keep the game going for a long time. Which makes the Federal Reserve's noises about desiring a bout of inflation to bring down the real value of the debt very puzzling. Fiat currencies get their value from confidence that currency as a store of value. Undermining that in the face of 1:1 debt to GDP ratios seems ill advised.
That 4.3% is an absolute lie and the Japanese know it is. First off they consider anyone working even an hour a week as "employed", secondly the number masks the massive number of people(mostly middle aged older men who used to work in factories or were middle managers) they hire to do absolutely pointless shit. In a country with one of the lowest crime levels in the world, they have an awfully large number of security guards. And then there are the guys they hire to go around putting "tickets" on bikes, and the guys they hire to hold signs telling people not to use their cell phones while driving, and the guys they hire to man crosswalks with perfectly valid signals(the list can go on for days), not to mention the massive over-construction and not counting a large number of women as being "unemployed" because they "voluntarily" quit work to have kids. The real Japanese unemployment number is easily over 10%, probably closer to 15%. The US number isn't perfect, but it is a much more accurate reflection of the true unemployment rate than the Japanese number is.
Monstar L
The first rule of economics like crime stats that you learn is that rates are calculated differently from country to country. I'd hazard that 4.3% isn't true either, rather it's closer to around 8.5%. Which is still marginally better than the US. The US on the otherhand, is much closer to 16.8%. Canada on the other hand is around 7.8%, though if you figure everything out it's right around 8.3% in total numbers of unemployment.
That you even say the US number is more accurate is laughable. It's off by nearly 8%, and anyone who even has a passing interest in economics, plays the markets, or even plays with currency knows this. I actually trust the japanese numbers more than the US, because the Japanese markets, not to mention the FM is more open on exactly how they're floating against the USD.
Om, nomnomnom...
And yet, despite what the economists tell us, they rock us all when it comes to living standards. Least number of homeless people, least amount of murder per capita in the world, healthiest population and the most high-tech gadgets in the world. All over the world you see Japanese tourists spending money like crazy because they think our prices are so low. The economists doesn't know shit because they have it all backwards. Normal people see economy and growth rates as a means to make our lives better and improve our society. Economists see society and peoples lives as a means to jack up the growth rates and maximize GDP.
Football Odds
Of-course the Keynesian charlatans don't understand at all that inflation created by government counterfeiting of currency just lowers the price of things, so price of labour goes down (and the Fed says - that's how we increase employment) so with lower price for labour more people MAY be hired.
- typing too fast, correction, inflation raises price of things, but it destroys purchasing power.
Inflation destroys purchasing power of individuals, and thus the cost of labour goes down when inflation hits, because employees can buy less with their pay-check.
You can't handle the truth.