Rotorhead 
08/16/2007, 17:43:17
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$65 to $100 a month real wages at the current exchange rate, adjusted for PPP works out to a the equivelent to earning a few hundred bucks a month in a US priced economy. Those workers aren't buying microwave ovens, audio equipment, home furnishings and major appliances, all the things US consumers buy to keep the US economy humming. They live in a company dorm and eat at the company dining hall. Some life! What money they have left over after paying the subsidized rate for room and board ( what you euphemistically call "subsides" for "housing" , ho ho nice try ) is just about enough to buy some nice cloths. This emphatically is not a consumer society, this is bare subsistance, a meager existance. Even so, with 1.3 billon people China can just exceed the economic might of 36 million Californian's. It cannot even match the output ( or income ) of 180 million Japanese. These are consumer economies, not China. These are places where people have money to spend on expensive consumer goods. When the average Chinese factory worker has at least their own apartment and is buying TV's, refrigerators, audio equipment,computers and cars then we can start to talk about a consumer society in China. Ain't there yet.
Japan's political weakness is precisely it's version of one party rule. The dominance of the LDP has weakened Japanese institutions. It is corrupt, as all one party states are. True political competition will strengthen Japan.
My masters thesis was a study of the effects of socio political instability on economic growth and deveopment. One of the statistically salient points that was obvious from the data was that in all cases elected governments had less instability, higher long term growth rates and in every case were the highers economic achievers.
Something else that was apparent was that socio-political instability increased with per-capita GDP up to around $2000 US per annum, then fell off rapidly as people began to have a real stake in a nation's survival. The conumdrum was this, instability could choke off investment and stall a nation's growth, but instability seemed to increase with income as a nation developed until that magic $2000 per capita per annum was achieved. The best way to guarantee continued growth was to invest in education, infastructure and healthcare while developing a transparent body of laws, honest courts to adjudicate the inevitable disputes and to have an honest civil service. The degree of political stability largely determined how far an economy could develope. The level of economic attainment a nation may achieve is determined to a large degree by how stable it's form of government is, and in every case studied democracies were more stable ( I used a statistic developed by a Professor Gupta of SDSU for instabilty that measured ten aspects of political upheaval, like assassinations, large demonstrations, unelected leadership changes, military takeovers, and the like ).
If you want to read my professors/mentors writings on this Dr Yannis Venieris and Dr. Gupta, both of SDSU have written in great depth on this subject. I borrowed heavily from their inspriation.
The pilot is always the first person at the scene of the crash.
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