On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Adam Kessler wrote:
> (1) Japan is *not* prosperous because it received
> foreign aid from the U.S some 40 years ago and (2) Japan is *not* prosperous
> because it is able to exploit Thailand or Indonesia. Although offering
> positive explanations of Japanese prosperity may be complicated, the first
> steps are easy: (1) Japan enjoys tremendous levels of thrift and therefore
> investment and thus was able to accumulate a large capital stock. (2) Japan
> has a highly educated and hard-working labor force. And that's about it!
Oh, really? So what are Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, Sumitomo etc. etc.
doing building plants up and down Indonesia, Thailand and elsewhere in
SE Asia, working on their tans or something? They're making money on those
investments -- big-time money. They pay their workers zip, and export to
First World markets, just like European and American multinationals, and
part of the surplus gets kicked back to that highly-educated Japanese
workforce (the scientists, engineers, technicians, managers, marketers
etc.) and most goes right back to the company in question.
In return, Indonesia gets lots of toxic waste dumps, lousy
fly-by-night jobs, a mountain of yen-denominated bonds which they
can't possibly pay off, plus advice from the sado-monetarist thugs at the
IMF to slash social spending on wages, health care and education, thus
ensuring that Indonesia stays at the bottom of the world economic
food-chain, an easy target for giant multinationals and global rentiers.
No, Japan didn't get rich off of just Thailand, they got rich off the
whole damn Third World -- just like we did, and continue to do.
-- Dennis