1% Growth! Please to Obey Abenomics Rule!

[Coligny]

I think IPU has been trollin' the senior centers lately...

Already sick of young ones. Older ones are so much less hassel and they pay for shit.

Finally... Someone else see the light...

Also... Holding this one for soooo long...

image.jpg

[J.A.F.O]

I think IPU has been trollin' the senior centers lately...

Already sick of young ones. Older ones are so much less hassel and they pay for shit.

Finally... Someone else see the light...

Yea I ain't gonna lie "me Julie" is 8 yrs my senior. She pays for 99.999999999% of shit.

[Coligny]

Shit... You beat me by a year... Ratio is 7/100% in the bigT... Could we share the hate and attention of the selfrightdroolies ? Getting a bit old at times...

[IparryU]

I think IPU has been trollin' the senior centers lately...

Already sick of young ones. Older ones are so much less hassel and they pay for shit.

Finally... Someone else see the light...

Yea I ain't gonna lie "me Julie" is 8 yrs my senior. She pays for 99.999999999% of shit.

yup, that is why I hunt for cougars. They pay for the hotel, drinks and breakfast the next day. All on the husband's tab. More experienced and pussy is rarely used. Cant complain.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I think IPU has been trollin' the senior centers lately...

Already sick of young ones. Older ones are so much less hassel and they pay for shit.

That really depends on what you mean by younger and older. 18 to 23 is great in terms of them having low expectations and not looking to get married. The worst is late 20's to mid 30's. Once you start getting close to and beyond 40 they become easier to deal with again, and like you said, they've got their own money.

[IparryU]

I think IPU has been trollin' the senior centers lately...

Already sick of young ones. Older ones are so much less hassel and they pay for shit.

That really depends on what you mean by younger and older. 18 to 23 is great in terms of them having low expectations and not looking to get married. The worst is late 20's to mid 30's. Once you start getting close to and beyond 40 they become easier to deal with again, and like you said, they've got their own money.

mid-late 30's are a good deal.

18 to 23 is just a 50/50 PITA. They either fuck and go (=great) or they want this that and the other + attention. Fuck all that.

Why are there like... 2 or 3 threads on this discussion now?

[J.A.F.O]

Shit... You beat me by a year... Ratio is 7/100% in the bigT... Could we share the hate and attention of the selfrightdroolies ? Getting a bit old at times...

I get a lot of strange looks when people ask what I do and reply with "Shufu" 主夫. I guess I don't look the part...

[Coligny]

Shit... You beat me by a year... Ratio is 7/100% in the bigT... Could we share the hate and attention of the selfrightdroolies ? Getting a bit old at times...

I get a lot of strange looks when people ask what I do and reply with "Shufu" 主夫. I guess I don't look the part...

Same here... also... i do tend to prefer househusband or toyboy...

[Samurai_Jerk]

The correct term is male housewife.

[IparryU]

The correct term is male housewife.

a career i want to pursue...

[Samurai_Jerk]

The correct term is male housewife.

a career i want to pursue...

Too bad it involved marriage.

[J.A.F.O]

The correct term is male housewife.

a career i want to pursue...

Too bad it involved marriage.

Just have 6 or 7 concubines on the side. Doesn't seem to stop anyone on the Diet.

[matsuki]

The correct term is male housewife.

a career i want to pursue...

Too bad it involved marriage.

Just have 6 or 7 concubines on the side. Doesn't seem to stop anyone on the Diet.

Somehow not being physically present seems have prevented most of the usual problems here...until someone asks "how's the wife?" and you honestly don't know

[J.A.F.O]

Somehow not being physically present seems have prevented most of the usual problems here...until someone asks "how's the wife?" and you honestly don't know

LMAO This really shouldn't be funny buuuut, I'm with my wife everyday and I still have no clue how she's doing...

[matsuki]

Somehow not being physically present seems have prevented most of the usual problems here...until someone asks "how's the wife?" and you honestly don't know

LMAO This really shouldn't be funny buuuut, I'm with my wife everyday and I still have no clue how she's doing...

Believe me, that's exactly how I feel. Shouldn't laugh but can't help it. Just about everything we decided before signing on the dotted line seems to have gone in the opposite way since. No ill intent or anything like that, much of it is out of either of our control.

[IparryU]

Somehow not being physically present seems have prevented most of the usual problems here...until someone asks "how's the wife?" and you honestly don't know

LMAO This really shouldn't be funny buuuut, I'm with my wife everyday and I still have no clue how she's doing...

Believe me, that's exactly how I feel. Shouldn't laugh but can't help it. Just about everything we decided before signing on the dotted line seems to have gone in the opposite way since. No ill intent or anything like that, much of it is out of either of our control.

Its a time game, but with the lil brother going back home i would say it is a deal breaker now...

[Mike Oxlong]

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Approves $29 Billion Stimulus Package
Stimulus Plan Focused on Small Businesses, Rural Communities and Post-Disaster Reconstruction

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday approved a $29.17 billion stimulus package meant to boost consumer spending and regional economic activity, seeking to revive an economy in recession.

The spending package focuses on small businesses, rural communities and post-disaster reconstruction. Its passage marks the first major act by Mr. Abe’s new cabinet since his party’s decisive win this month in an election he had framed as a referendum on his economic policies.

Mr. Abe had vowed during the campaign to concentrate on spreading the wealth outside Tokyo and to help businesses and consumers hurt by a sharp decline in the yen’s exchange rate.

About half of the money will go to reconstruction following recent natural disasters. The government will also provide subsidies to local municipalities to bolster consumption through spending vouchers and coupons for residents. Help for low-income households will include handouts to families with small children and heating-oil subsidies.

Japan’s economy has contracted for two consecutive quarters—one definition of a recession—after a sales tax increase in April hit consumer spending. Mr. Abe last month said he would delay another increase in the tax set for next October.

His economic program, dubbed Abenomics, consists of a combination of monetary and fiscal stimulus and structural changes. The central bank’s asset purchases—dubbed quantitative easing—have contributed to the yen’s decline of more than a third against the U.S. dollar since Mr. Abe took office in December 2012.

While exporters have benefited from the weaker yen, and corporate profits are at record levels, the currency’s decline has hurt some small businesses and consumers by driving up import costs.

The challenge for Mr. Abe now is putting more money into consumers’ pockets. The government said Friday that real wages—or wages adjusted for inflation—declined in November by 4.3% from a year earlier, the 17th consecutive monthly drop.

The government and Bank of Japan are pressing companies to raise wages next year as part of a campaign to reverse the country’s “deflationary mind-set” and achieve 2% inflation.

Inflation is weakening. It fell in November to its lowest level in more than a year as oil prices continued their steep decline. The core consumer-price index rose 0.7%, down from 0.9% in October, after stripping out the effects of the sales-tax increase.

Household spending fell for an eighth straight month, dropping 2.5% from a year earlier, adjusted for price changes.

In a statement Saturday, the government also vowed to push forward with structural changes in health care, agriculture, energy and labor.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-prime ... 1419675495

[Salty]

... In a statement Saturday, the government also vowed to push forward with structural changes in health care, agriculture, energy and labor.

Good, but they really need to start with Government/Bureaucracy – so that tax moneys can be used wisely, instead of being wasted. Halve the number of politicians, decimate the number of bureaucrats would be a good start.

[Mike Oxlong]

Piketty Diagnoses Japan's Sick Economy

Toyota's projected record $18 billion windfall profit should put a smile on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's face. This was, after all, how his economic strategy was supposed to work -- after two years of driving down the yen and filling the coffers of the nation's giant exporters, they in turn would give workers fat pay rises. Hello consumer spending, goodbye deflation.

Except Toyota isn't sharing the spoils. Like most of Japan's industry bosses, Akio Toyoda, the company president, is hoarding the cash. Abenomics may be great for corporate Japan, but most of the nation's 127 million people are still waiting for any benefit. How to move the wealth along? Well, there's someone traveling the country who might offer Abe's team a clue: Thomas Piketty.

Over the past week, the French economist has received rock-star treatment in Japan, where the translation of his 2013 book on inequality will soon hit bookshelves. The problem, Piketty argues, is that the Bank of Japan's ultra-loose policies are ginning up stocks and real estate, assets that tend to further enrich the wealthy. Meanwhile, the 30 percent plunge in the yen, disappearing bank-account interest and rising household costs are hurting everyone else. The BOJ, in other words, is increasing the gulf between the haves and have-nots.

"It’s not enough to print money,” Piketty told Bloomberg's Daniel Leussink in Tokyo. “If you print money, you can create bubbles on the stock market, on real estate prices. But that’s not necessarily increasing consumer price inflation and increasing growth.”

By relying almost entirely on "creative" monetary policies and delaying any structural reforms, Abenomics risks increasing Japan's Gini coefficient -- a measure of a nation's rich-poor gap. Japanese have long been proud of being "ichioku-sohchu-ryu” -- a nation of middle-class people. Yet Japan's sense of egalitarianism is fading as fast as its tradition of lifetime employment. At 0.336, Japan's Gini ranking is already worse than that of Germany, France, Italy and Canada.

Why are CEOs being so stingy? Abenomics has three arrows: monetary expansion, fiscal stimulus and a deregulatory "big bang." The first two have been deployed, but Abe has failed to lower trade barriers, loosen labor markets, reduce red tape or encourage entrepreneurship. Corporate executives say higher wages are contingent on these upgrades; Abe wants paychecks fattened now. As the standoff continues, consumer-price gains (2.4 percent year-over-year) are setting Japanese back.

Just as Japan is a laboratory for what happens when an entire population ages, it's a testing ground for whether zero interest rates can do more harm than good. In a May 2014 paper titled "How Does Unconventional Monetary Policy Affect Inequality?," economists Ayako Saiki and Jon Frost of the Netherlands central bank found that "structural reforms can play a role to offset widened income inequality." The longer Abenomics remains just a monetary game, the more Japanese society will suffer.

"Abe talks about tackling deflation, but with so many younger workers sidelined into low-paid, dead-end jobs, they can't spend much, won't have families, won't buy houses or invest in stocks," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo.

Japan's relative poverty rate -- those living on less than half of median income -- is already about 16 percent, the sixth worst among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. What worries Kingston is the rise of an insecure "precariat" in Japan, which he puts at 38 percent of the workforce. "Growing disparities," he added, "trample on egalitarian norms and values. Increasingly, Abenomics is seen to be welfare for the wealthy."

The answer, Piketty suggests, is a fourth arrow: a plan to redistribute wealth. Abe wants to cut Japan's 35 percent corporate tax to further pad company profits. That would be grand for Toyota, which may earn more this fiscal year than the 11 other carmakers in Japan combined. Why not target the other end of the economy with tax incentives and stronger social safety nets? “I think in Japan it’s important to rebalance the tax system in favor of the young generation, who have a very difficult time to access property right now in Japan," said the author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” "Increasing the value-added tax, which is what Abe did, is not a very good way to reduce inequality in Japan.”

Piketty also favors raising taxes on rich Japanese, particularly beneficiaries of what he calls "patrimonial capitalism," or heavily concentrated wealth passed down over generations. Abe also should slap a 10 percent to 20 percent levy on companies sitting on excessive cash piles. And why not use the bully pulpit to shame corporate Japan into sharing the wealth? If Toyoda and his ilk shared the record $2.3 trillion they held as of March 2014, Abenomics could be helping everyone.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... ck-economy

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japan's economy contracts in April-June quarter

Japan's recovery stalled in the April-June quarter, with the world's third-largest economy contracting at a 1.6 percent annual pace thanks to feeble consumer and corporate demand and slowing exports.

The dismal data reported Monday was expected, based on earlier reported figures, but it raises the likelihood the central bank may opt for fresh stimulus measures in coming months.

It also comes at an awkward time for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has championed a strategy of heavy monetary stimulus to help push prices higher and drive a "virtuous cycle" of stronger consumer spending and corporate investment. Abe has seen his popularity ratings slip following damaging legislative skirmishes over his proposals to expand the role of Japan's self-defense force and could use some positive news on the economic side.

But heavy rains in the spring and early summer are thought to have discouraged shoppers. Demand for autos has also slumped following a tax hike for smaller cars. As China's economy has slowed, its demand for exports has also lagged.

Economy minister Akira Amari, however, acknowledged inadequate progress toward getting companies to use their surging corporate profits to raise wages and domestic investment — a priority seen as vital to a sustainable recovery.

[Grumpy Gramps]

Ohhhh yeah, the rain and the Chinese...

[matsuki]

Economy minister Akira Amari, however, acknowledged inadequate progress toward getting companies to use their surging corporate profits to raise wages and domestic investment — a priority seen as vital to a sustainable recovery.

ketchi ketchi ketchi, cha cha cha

[kurogane]

I am starting to fear that the grand fiction of the postwar social compact might break down if they keep hoarding. Maybe that's why Abe and his mouth whore Sakurai are so hell bent on re-imposing a sense of duty to state and society? I can think of a few boardrooms where they could test their curriculum.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Why can't Japan shake its economic malaise? Two words: old people.

The Japanese economy is in recession for the upteenth time in the last few years. And no matter how you slice it, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Japan's lopsided demographics are the main culprit.

New data released on Monday shows Japan's GDP shrank by 0.8 percent in the third quarter, after suffering a similar decline in the second. It's more bad news for a country that has been battling stagnant economic growth ever since the epic collapse of its housing and stock markets in 1990. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came into office at the end of 2012, aiming to boost the economy through a tri-part approach of easy monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and structural reform — colloquially named "Abenomics" — but so far the results have been middling.

This is a good opportunity to look back and assess Abenomics so far. But before we do that, we should also work through just how different Japan's situation is from the United States, especially since Japan is regularly held up as the specter of economic malaise towards which America is slowly drifting.

Let's start with the elephant in the room, which is demographics. Americans over 65 are currently around 14 percent of the population, and are projected to hit 20 percent in 2050. But the over-65 crowd in Japan is 26 percent of its population right now, and is projected to hit 40 percent by 2050. In fact, the number of Japanese between age 15 and 64 has been shrinking in absolute terms ever since it peaked in the mid-1990s.

[Takechanpoo]

among j-younger generations, its pretty infamous that those babyboomer generation jijis often sow the seeds of strife.
my neighboring jiji, living in diagonally opposite side, is an extraordinarily early riser and clean the alley every single day.
but the dotard always throws collected garbages into neighbors grounds(including mine).

[matsuki]

Maybe AKB needs to start an old people jisatsu is kaiiiiii campaign?

[Salty]

among j-younger generations, its pretty infamous that those babyboomer generation jijis often sow the seeds of strife.
my neighboring jiji, living in diagonally opposite side, is an extraordinarily early riser and clean the alley every single day.
but the dotard always throws collected garbages into neighbors grounds(including mine).

Yes - but that leaf litter came from your trees - no?

[Takechanpoo]

you still see j-soicety from inside a cage of "kimchenized zoo".

there is a discontinuity in the value set between youngers and babyboomers here in japan.
younger generation japanese at age 10-30's are humble, aloof, policy of noninterference, put weight on rationality and low crime rate regardless of their economic poverty. meanwhile, babyboomer generation jijis are arrogant, act big and do like hierarchy because they grew up to extremely swarm. they are such kamatte-chans or attention whores that they really do not like detached younger generations who hardly respect the hierarchy of wisdom of age. and in addition who have pushed up the whole crime rate are none other than those jijis(, not gaijins).

[Takechanpoo]

J-household income map
http://shimz.me/datavis/mimanCity/

[matsuki]

there is a discontinuity in the value set between youngers and babyboomers here in japan.
younger generation japanese at age 10-30's are humble, aloof, policy of noninterference, put weight on rationality and low crime rate regardless of their economic poverty. meanwhile, babyboomer generation jijis are arrogant, act big and do like hierarchy because they grew up to extremely swarm. they are such kamatte-chans or attention whores that they really do not like detached younger generations who hardly respect the hierarchy of wisdom of age. and in addition who have pushed up the whole crime rate are none other than those jijis(, not gaijins).

Are you posting drunk Take? You're making sense again...

J-household income map
http://shimz.me/datavis/mimanCity/

Cracks me up at how much of a gap is there between what is perceived by many of the locals and what's on that map.