Let's Not Go Down this Path...

"Please cancel all my afternoon meetings."Throughout the infamous Lost Decade of the 1990's, the Japanese government tried to stimulate the economy by lowering the interest rate, federally subsidizing and mandating unwelcome contruction projects in rural areas, and creating new government busy work.  The results of this were as follows: (1) the interest rate was lowered repeatedly with no effect until it reached zero.  The Bank of Japan's hands were tied: it couldn't raise the interest rate without hurting the economy, so it effectively had used up all of its resources on that front and was rendered impotent; (2) rural areas were overwhelmed with gradiose tunnel systems and multi-purpose/non-purpose halls, which went unused and fell into decay.  In my city, Fukushima, the ruralist of the rural (When the Beverly Hillbillies was dubbed into Japanese, they gave the characters Fukushima accents to emphasize the fact that they were uneducated hicks.), there are several pedestrian tunnels built to go under one-way streets, as though people couldn't just use the crosswalks.  These go unused, and in general have become unofficial homeless shelters.  There are also walls built to prevent mudslides in uninhabited areas and, of course, tetrapods; (3) government positions have spiralled out-of-control.  There are so many government workers that they've become their own demographic that politicians try to sex up for votes. 

During the recent downturn, then Prime Minister Taro Aso enacted a populist tax-rebate measure that sent every working-age adult in Japan a check for about 120 dollars and every Japanese child and retiree a check for about 200 dollars.  The real purpose of this program, of course, was not to give tax-rebates. (The amounts were paltry, and I refused to collect mine on principle, plus most people were panicking at that point and put theirs in the bank.)  The real purpose was to cater to the government workers lobby and expand government jobs for processing and distributing rebates, while putting taxpayers even further into real debt. 

Throughout its period of economic stagnation, which has lasted almost twenty years now, Japan has had one of the "lowest unemployment rates in the world".  This incongruity, however, has much more to do with the nature of Japanese jobs and the way statistics are collected than with reality.  A short illustration:

For foreigners living in Japan, it's become more and more difficult to get multi-year visas.  This is because the work required to process new visas every year is more important to Japanese legislators than not wasting foreigners's time.  For a typical renewal of a one-year working visa, one must receive the requisite forms and certificates from one's employer, then walk to the nearest town hall to receive more forms and certificates, then one must travel to a nearby city, take the bus or walk to an inconveniently-located immigration office, submit approximately 30 forms to the immigration authority, walk to another facility that sells revenue stamps, purchase a revenue stamp, walk back to the immigration office, affix the revenue stamp to a form, submit the form, go back to one's city, and then repeat the process again when it's time to pick the visa up.  This process requires more human capital than otherwise is neccesary, especially given the existence of computer technology.  The fact that fees must be paid in revenue stamps that are sold at another facility and not in cash at the immigration office is especially ridiculous and unneccesary.  Altogether this process takes two full days.  The procedure for obtaining a driver's license or business license is equally cumbersome, for foreigners and Japanese nationals alike.  This is only if nothing goes wrong. 

Nevertheless, things often do go wrong when processes are guided by strict adherence to a convoluted legal and bureaucratic code rather than common sense.  In the last month, I have already spent three full days trying to obtain a new visa to continue living and working in Japan.  Nevertheless, the last time I went to the town hall to receive my tax records, I was informed that they had been lost and that I must begin the process from anew.  I have at least three more full days ahead of me, making six total days spent submitting forms and standing in line to get a one-year visa.  These are six full days when I could be making meaningful contributions to the Japanese economy rather than just being a tax-serf. 

New Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised to downsize the influential Japanese bureaucracy and end ludicrous public works spending, and I hope that he can deliver on his promise.  Perhaps Japan, by liberalizing its economy, can begin a new growth period and inspire other nations to do the same. 

Working for the government in Japan is worse for the macroeconomy than being unemployed and on welfare: extraneous government workers make everyone else's life difficult and get paid more than welfare recipients.  Hatoyama's DPJ took a major risk when it alienated the influential government workers demographic and announced its intentions to downsize the Japanese bureaucracy, but everyone else, especially small-business owners and the self-employed, who can't afford to hire expensive lawyers to fast-track all the permits and forms that even an uncomplicated life in Japan requires, appreciated it and came out of the woodwork to vote overwhelmingly for Hatoyama's DPJ.

I am no friend of John Maynard Keynes, and, as Keynesian thinking seems to be undergoing a resurgence in already super-penetrated United States government economic policy circles, especially through the work of New York Times collumnist, Paul Krugman, and over-regulation seems to be cast more as the solution and less as the perpetrator of the recent financial troubles, I hope Washington doesn't try to reward itself with the creation of more busy work at the expense of the valuable time of regular people.  Let's not go down the path that Japan did in the 1990s and let people go through their lives as slaves to an entitled bureaucratic class.  Get a real job, you bums.