On Sep 24, 2014, at 3:24 AM, Anthony D'Costa <[email protected]> wrote:
> Fwiw abenomics hasn’t had time to work itself, if it should work. It also appears to have shot itself in the foot by hiking the sales tax which has caused the economy to contract - the identical policy error (from a Keynesian perspective) that an earlier Japanese administration committed in the 90’s when the economy seemed to be recovering and was then tipped back into recession. Discouraged Keynesians and other economists are hoping this is a temporary blip. > The structural problems of Japan are somewhat similar to most OECD economies. > Labor markets have changed because of hollowing out first and then the long > recession…Institutional stickiness in Japan remains high but adjustments are > being made. Unfortunately, my impression is that at the core of the planned structural adjustments - Abe’s “third arrow” in addition to fiscal and monetary easing - is deregulation of the labour market, which is code for weakening the unions and allowing employers to more easily fire full-time employees and replace them with part-time, casual, and contract employees at lower pay. That’s also contrary to customary Keynesian thinking, and is a process that’s been underway throughout the major OECD countries, including Japan, since the conservative (“neoliberal”) turn in the early 80’s. The “institutional stickiness” you describe - in this case, halting resistance from the unions and their left-centre political allies - has slowed the process down somewhat. Bringing more immigrants and women into the aging workforce is essential, but it is also being used as a pretext to accelerate the “deregulation” of unionized workplaces. The Abe government recognizes that wages need to rise to revive stable domestic demand and economic growth. To this end, it’s been imploring employers to boost wages - with predictable limited success. What brings wages up is more, not less, unionization. But, as we’ve seen, this is in contradiction to the Abenomics agenda and is not something that employers or governments anywhere are going to concede unless they have to. Unlike in the 30’s, the greater mobility of global capital and other developments have gravely weakened the bargaining and political power of workers in Japan and elsewhere, reflected in the much lower incidence of militant trade union organization and strike activity. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
