May 25, 2016
The NYT apparently wants its readers to believe that the economic policies put in place by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, have been a failure. In an article on G-7 summit meeting it quoted Kenneth S. Courtis, chairman of Starfort Holdings and a former Asia vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., as saying that Abe’s policies are “viewed mainly as a ‘marketing slogan.'” According to Courtis:
“Japan needs to ‘take a blowtorch’ to regulations and red tape that discourage competition.”
It would have been useful to include some actual data in the piece instead of just presenting readers with disparaging comments from someone in the financial industry. According to the OECD, Japan’s employment rate has increased by 3.2 percentage points since Abe took office in the fall of 2012. This would be equivalent to an increase in employment in the United States of more than 6.4 million workers.
By comparison, the employment rate in the United States has risen by just 1.9 percentage points over this same period. Articles in the New York Times and elsewhere have often praised the pace of job growth in the United States over this period.
While it is clear that Mr. Courtis is unhappy with the regulatory structure in Japan, the data seem to indicate less need for change than he implies in this article.
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