Just in time for Davos

[Rob Schaap]

>>Sunday, January 28 9:09 AM SGT
>>
>>The debt time bomb that could explode in Japan's face
>>
>>TOKYO, Jan 28 (AFP) -
><snip>
>>The pension system represents another time bomb ticking as Japan's
>>population ages more rapidly than any other in the world.
>
>Japan has a huge under-used pool of labor -- women.  Were Japanese
>feminists & leftists alive & kicking (rather than stagnant & bereft
>of imagination as they are), they would make use of the current
>economic crisis to create a new capital-labor settlement on the basis
>of gender equality, by reviving women's movement, though doing so
>would make them part of the neoliberal Third Way, more likely than
>not.

Which would suit them right now, I expect.  Mebbe to get from here to there
they gotta take any apparent improvement on offer, eh?  Proletarian status
is better status than they currently have, I'd imagine.  And equal pay
(plus access to whatever's left of that 'career structure' thingy) is,
perhaps, a necessity for equal status.

Liberal feminism looks like shite only if the liberal feminists have
already done the hard yards for you.  It'd look pretty good from where most
Japanese women are watching, I reckon.  I don't say we're all bound down
the same trajectory, mind, but I am betting that's the way to go in Japan
right now.

Cheers,
Rob.