> Have you looked at Swedish unemployment lately? In its glory days, Swedish
> social democracy did exert substantial influence over the labor market, for
> sure - it was a great victory. But since the 1970s, capital has been on the
> offensive, and the model has now been dismantled. In Japan, there's long
> been a large pool of contingent (disproportionately female) labor that
> could be shed in down cycles, a fact the unemployment rate disguised.
>
> Doug
But just "recently" according to the BLS. As recently according to BLS the Unemployment rate in Sweden was 1.8% but the last 8-9 years have been terrible, averaging 9 to 10%. Japan with significant male unemployment would have big labor unrest given the minimal unemployment statistics. Here is the Japanese data for the past 20 years. Source http://stats.bls.gov. Sweden was comparable to Japan until about 1990. Thats when the effect of dismantling took place as measured by unemployment
PERIOD JAPAN SWEDEN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1975 1.9 1.6
1976 2.0 1.6
1977 2.0 1.8
1978 2.3 2.2
1979 2.1 2.1
1980 2.0 2.0
1981 2.2 2.5
1982 2.4 3.1
1983 2.7 3.5
1984 2.8 3.1
1985 2.6 2.8
1986 2.8 2.6
1987 2.9 2.2
1988 2.5 1.9
1989 2.3 1.6
1990 2.1 1.8
1991 2.1 3.1
1992 2.2 5.6
1993 2.5 9.3
1994 2.9 9.6
1995 3.2 9.1
1996 3.4 9.9
1997 3.4 9.8
1998 4.1 8.4
--mike Japan's unemployment is worse than it has been in 23 years. You mentioned that female unemployment is not counted but you thought it was relatively low. Japan as we remarked probably cannot tolerate high unemployment without large social unrest, there is minimal unemployment even now.
If these statistics are a composite unemployment rate like the US in this regard they don't look terrible If not, then are they eqivalent to say white male adult unemployment which is lower. This is still not terribly unfavorable to say the least. The point I was making is that they have another solution to deal with the "business attitude problem" discussed by Kalecki. I agree that it may not be Utopian for Japanese labor. All of this rests of the accuracy of the statistics which is another question. It be nice if they were published with standard errors.
--mike -- Michael Cohen mike at cns.bu.edu Work: 677 Beacon, Street, Rm313 Boston, Mass 02115 Home: 25 Stearns Rd, #3 Brookline, Mass 02146 Tel-Work: 617-353-9484 Tel-Home:617-734-8828 Tel-FAX:617-353-7755