Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Sep 16, 2020 16 tweets 5 min read Read on X
1/Today's @bopinion post is about Japan's next Prime Minster, Yoshihide Suga, and what he needs to do in order to revitalize Japan's economy.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
2/Suga's predecessor, Abe, managed to put Japanese people back to work. COVID will interrupt that success, but only for a short while. Image
3/The problem is productivity.

Japan saw good productivity growth under Abe -- better than the U.S.! But it still lags BADLY behind other rich nations.

Suga needs to change this.

japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/1…
4/Japan has an unproductive, inefficient corporate culture. It's holding back everything else in the economy.

This is what Suga needs to change. Image
5/The first way to change this corporate culture is to encourage more REMOTE WORK. Image
6/Fortunately, COVID has already pushed Japanese companies to implement remote-work policies.

Now Suga just needs to deploy the correct incentives to make sure the new approach is permanent.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
7/The second important change is MID-CAREER HIRING.

Employees must flow between companies!! Image
8/And the most important corporate reform is to PROMOTE MORE WOMEN!

Abe set a target for promotion of women, but failed to meet it.

Suga must succeed where Abe failed!

mainichi.jp/english/articl…
9/Economic analyses show that gender equality is a powerful engine of economic growth.

Women's talents must be fully utilized!!

review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2020…
10/As things stand, Japanese women tend to get pushed into low-paying, dead-end "irregular" jobs.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
11/The Japanese government can deploy many tools to fix this.

First, it can use preferential government contracting to award companies that promote more women.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
12/Next, Japan can repeal a very bad tax law that discourages women from making over a certain amount of money!!

taxfoundation.org/how-tax-code-c…
13/Remote work and mid-career hiring will also help women get promoted.

Remote work will help women balance career and family. Mid-career hiring will enable women to go from the "irregular" to the "regular" job track.
14/And a general corporate culture of efficiency and productivity will be good for woman managers!!

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
15/In addition to all these reforms, Suga should substantially increase the minimum wage, to prevent inequality from rising, and to make sure every Japanese worker can put food on the table. Image
15/With these reforms -- remote work, mid-career hiring, promoting more women, and raising the minimum wage -- Suga would have a chance to go down in the history books as a truly great leader.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

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More from @Noahpinion

Mar 24
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
Read 10 tweets
Jan 19
Here are some countries that did catch up to other countries.

Poland caught up to Portugal: Image
South Korea caught up to Japan: Image
Ireland caught up to the UK

(graph ends before major Irish tax shenanigans begin) Image
Read 13 tweets
Jan 10
This thread asks how we should deal with inborn inequality, and concludes that the best solution is noblesse oblige.

I think the best solution is public goods.
Public goods have two advantages:

1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and

2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.

This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 7, 2023
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.

Let's go through it!
2/Here was my original post. I've updated it with a response at the bottom.

noahpinion.blog/p/stop-saying-…
3/Here's @Birdyword's first mistake. To say there's a "case for doubt" means that there's a possibility that decoupling isn't happening.

But just look at FDI into China. It just went negative for the first time in recorded history. That's definitely real. That is decoupling!
Image
Image
Read 14 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
Illegal immigration went into reverse for over a decade, but as of 2021 it's positive again.

pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…
Image
Just over 1 out of 5 U.S. immigrants are unauthorized, according to Census data. Image
Illegal immigration from Mexico continues to go in reverse.

The typical unauthorized immigrant is no longer Mexican. Image
Read 8 tweets
Oct 31, 2023
The reason Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is bad isn't because civilian casualties are never acceptable when fighting against evil, but because bombing Gaza seems like it will not actually do much to eliminate Hamas, and will simply kill civilians for no purpose.
"The Allies leveled German cities, Hamas are as bad as Nazis, thus it's OK to level Gaza" ignores the fact that even if strategic bombing had been as effective as people thought (note: it wasn't), leveling Gaza will not produce a WW2-like outcome.
"The ends don't justify the means" should apply to the actual outcome, not just the goal you have in your head.

If the outcome is "everyone just keeps on hating each other and fighting forever", then no, the ends do not justify the means.
Read 9 tweets

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