Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Not surprisingly, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan lost yesterday's election, what was somewhat surprising though was how much they lost by, the lost nearly 75%(!!) of their seats. going from a small majority of 200ish seat down to 50.
The old LDP will now return to power, and it looks like Shinzo Abe, the guy that started this whole "1 PM a year" mess nearly 7 years ago will get another crack. Abe's known as a conservative hawk, but during his last brief stint he was actually pragmatic. a few other interesting take though...
1. Abe appears to want to go for the most massive Keneysian policy seen yet, by making a massive drive to lower the Yen (aka print a $#@!e load of them). and expand public spending. it is certainly eye brow raising in a country that already boast one of the worlds' highest public debt (rather total or per capita, albeit almost all of it is internal lending) . it would certainly offer a very interesting test of economic theory at least.
2.the former mayor of Tokyo, the highly controversial Ishihara ran for congress and won easily , and in fact his new party has almost as many seats as the former ruling DPJ now. this certainly means they at least have a significance in the Japanese politics, which is more than a little worrisome to many observers, given their almost neo-nazi like view on the events of the early 20th century.
It looks like a fairly toxic and risky mix going on in Japan at the moment, highly incompetent government that wants to go on a huge spending binge when it's already deeply in debt. on top of all that it seems the ghost of imperial Japan is crawling back more than a little bit on stage as there are now real advocates of rearming Japan and going nuclear (interestingly, the same folks seem to want to shut down all the japanese nuclear power plants, the irony is striking.) I guess on the brighter side of things the extreme elements rarely materialize in any democracy while even in the worst case for Japan, at least breaking the nasty status quo and starting anew has some benifits.
Last edited by RollingWave; 12-17-2012 at 02:24 AM.
KC (12-17-2012)
It is funny to see someone printing money to stimulate the economy called conservative.
well maybe not, if they really do ..
A. change their consititution on their military.. that's obviously a huge game changer (unlikely for the better though)
B. completely go off nuclear right now , also a big game changer (not in a good way for their short term economy, though great news for me since I work in renewable energy )
C. really do go for a Keneysian wet dream of a policy... either way of the outcome would certainly not be the status quo.
It is more interesting than it has been in a while actually.
Last edited by RollingWave; 12-17-2012 at 02:31 AM.
From what I understand Japanese politics has a lot to do with consensus, and the LDP were a huge factor in maintaining the status quo, or at least until the recent DJP shakeup.
Junichiro Koizumi was a conservative LDP guy though too, and he's everyone's favorite Japanese PM.
well, compare to the last few years Koizumi was obviously a huge upgrade, he didn't have great relationship with China though, and some of the issues the DPJ faced / attempted to tackle were either very unfortunate (like the tsunami) or controversial (like sales taxes and US bases.) or left over issue that remained unaddressed for decades. this is the oddity here, there is a lot of self contradiction in Japan. and the case of the bases is really a lot more complex than the US being stationed in Japan, for one thing, that most of it is based in Okinawa is one of the greatest source of grief, since Okinawa was in fact, a very much independent state and culture from Japan until their run of imperialism. and yet it took the most catastrophic damage during WW2 (it had by FAR the highest death per capita of any places in Japan, including Hiroshima) . and now has to play host to the US bases to defend the rest of Japan.
The truth is, if Japan's economy really tanks big time (it has been stagnant for decades but not really tanking, though it is hovering dangerously close to that.) Okinawa Independence movement may actually reemerge with a vengence (see Scotland / Catalonia etc..) and I think there' a decent chance of that happening in our life time. and then we'll have a whole nother round of geopolitical head ach... since for example, China would almost surely support an independent Okinawa for many reasons. (historical ties, elbowing Japan and the US in general.) and South Korea probably would like to see that happen as well.
Last edited by RollingWave; 12-17-2012 at 03:27 AM.