In Sweden our foreign affairs minister was murdered two days before a referendum if we should switch to Euro currency. It destroyed the final days of campaigning.
Also I think it is common with sympathy votes in situations like this, for the party close to the victim.
Opposition MP Jo Cox was murdered a week before the Brexit referendum. As a result the Remain side suspended campaigning briefly while some of the Leave side, especially online campaigns, continued.
In the Netherlands in 2002, controversial politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered 9 days before the election. It resulted in a landslide 26/150 seat first-time entry for his party into parliament (although it would probably have been quite large anyway).
God forbid someone would learn from these events and make necessary changes.
There’s a middle ground, the US approach of putting your head into the ground unless a donor can benefit financially isn’t necessarily true for the entire world.
> IMF affirmed that Japan's nominal GDP contracted by $1.8 trillion during 2012–2015 while real GDP contracted at an annual rate of 6.8 percent[58] in the second quarter of 2014, after the Consumption Tax hike came into effect in April. This fall is the worst since the devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster[59][60] hit Japan in the first quarter of 2011 when the GDP shrank by an annualised 6.9 percent.
So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami.
That said, he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.
Note that Japan is in a savage demographic crunch, with a TFR well below replacement and an ageing population, which means the ratio of workers to dependents (the elderly) is dropping. Which in turn reduces average productivity and GDP. Actual population decline is deflationary and Japan's been in that situation since the start of the 1990s.
This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).
Immigration is not one-stop solution to fix GDP because integration is huge cost that is rarely taken into account. And of course it doesn't at all address the real problem, that men and women no longer creates families.
This is typical of todays debate in the West, not solve the real issue, instead offer some sort of band aid solution and completely ignore the real issue.
Japanese is a population of about 126 million living on size of Norway, a country of 5.4 million inhabitants.
Is there really no other way to go around demographic ratios except by importing young people? Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
Opening to immigration would lead to cultural genocide of Japan. Eventually those immigrants would (rightly) want equality and would introduce their own customs, traditions, and myths, etc. They’re better off preserving their way of life than destroying it so make believe numbers look better.
demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
> and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants
Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve.
Abenomics was not likely a good idea at the time nor in retrospect, but a lot of the GDP contraction has less to do with monetary policy and far more to do with cultural/social policies that the population embraces - government-sanctioned or not.
Very low birth replacement rates, very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale, Sony et al being beaten by Intel to the correct Silicon Valley model, and so forth all contribute to contracting GDP quite a bit.
EDIT: This is not to say I think Japan has the wrong idea or whatever; I agree that chasing GDP is not some end-all be-all thing. I'm just saying that while I don't regard Abe as a genius economist, I don't think it's too fair he get a ton of blame either given that his country's demographics, social model, and other factors likely contributed far more towards the inertia of a shrinking economy.
> very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale
These are all things that Abe’s government and policies strongly supported.
Happier than average, but that average includes countries wracked by war, poverty and corruption.
Edit: the 2022 World Happiness Report ranks Japan at 54th out of 146 with a score of 6.039 normalized to 0.67, an improvement, and is now comparable to Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Honduras.
Inequality is low in Japan but the people in general are not that rich these days and are getting poorer; it's a big problem. On the other hand, unemployment is significantly better than in 2010 - most of the cultural things you used to hear about Japan like crazy fashion were because all the young people were unemployed and had nothing better to do than stand around in Harajuku. And the famously low birth rate is up again and higher than other Asian countries. A lot of that is due to Abe's policies. (The last one gets all the memes.)
You’re looking at nominal GDP measured in USD over a period when the value of the yen fell significantly relative to the USD.
If you look at the trend you can clearly see the nominal GDP fell back down to trend after a massive spike during the high yen period post-GFC.
I lived in Japan most of that period and no one thought of it as a recession. Unemployment fell to essentially zero, the stock market boomed, the lower yen was welcomed and ultimately “real” (PPP) GDP rose.
There’s a reason Abe was able to serve as PM for so long in a country otherwise notorious for cycling switching leaders.
Those numbers are wildly misleading. The Q2 2014 GDP drop was 1.7% but this is largely because consumers brought forward consumption of big ticket items to Q1 - where the economy grew by 0.8%.
The economy ACTUALLY only shrank by 0.1% in 2014 but then grew by 0.4%,0.2%,0.5% the following three years, which is actually a lot for Japan.
You don’t even know that any other policy would be better, because we can’t rewind and retry. And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy.
"And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy."
But the economy is a very basic, essential thing.
If it is bad, things are indeed bad for many people, which counts more to them than the great politic.
Johnson would not have to worry about anything, if the UK's economy would be running smoothly. Which it does not and the brexit is basically still unsolved and a great feeling of insecurity remains. This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
> he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.
if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake, and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information.
That isn’t how you defines a mistake. To flip the logic, if you know something is a bad idea and do it anyway that’s not a mistake either, it’s intentional.
> if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake
Mistakes are by definition only known to be mistakes after the fact. If you know before you do something that it’s going to fail then it is not a mistake.
It is a common pitfall to attribute both the good stuff and the bad stuff to whoever is in power at the time. We like to forget that success and failure are to large extent dependent on current context (economical, societal and so on).
This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something!
Improving %metric% thanks to general development and despite the dictator in power is very much a thing, just as declining %metric% could have been the best possible outcome.
>So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami.
That's an odd take considering Japan's economy has been contracting for 25 years. Can you be specific on how his economic contractions was different than those those before (or after) him?
Japan is much more complicated than that and apply capitalist measures of success isnt doing it justice
- Demographic crunch, as mentioned. The country not descending into uncontrolled decline may already been a decent achievement
- Focus on quality. This is unique to Japan and runs counter capitalist growth stories. Japanese consumers value quality. a lot. But it’s bad for business in the growth sense, you don’t need to buy a new fridge for 10-15 years because it works and isn’t made obsolete artificially, Japanese consumers are happy, growth : consumption metrics are not.
Quality is just not captured as a variable in the western / American way of looking at economic health. Not having train delays, having great customer service, no forced obsolete products, high reliability in services and products are not reflected / incentivized in that model - they don’t exist but that’s not how Japan works.
Japan has issues, quite a few, but it’s not nearly the hellhole American economic publications love to make it out for decades now. It may be a nightmare scenarios for the get rich quick dudes with US MBAs, but quality of life is pretty decent for a country this far down the demographic curve.
We can only really judge how they fared when America enters that demographic slope.
> The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics":
I don't think you get assassinated for economic policies (unless you really impoverish a large section of the population). I think it's more likely he got assassinated for some fairly random loony reason by someone unhinged or for his non-economy related right wing policies (e.g. on defense and foreign policy).
Interest rate hikes enacted to fight inflation also raise a currency in the forex markets. (Because holding said currency gives you relatively better yield vs before the hike.)
A currency is a tool of the economy controllable by a central bank, not a competition (otherwise everyone would
d shoot for high deflation).
The instantaneous exchange rate between two currencies does not give any information about the strength or weakness of the economies that operate on those currencies.
Violence in Japan is so low, something like that is just outside their normal reality. It's more likely to see some malfunctioning tech, than experience a real gun fired. And with all the smoke, that's what people probably thought at first, that some tech went haywire.
It makes me think of, funnily enough, a scene in an anime.
In this scene, set in a utopian, crime-free society (at least on the surface), a woman is beaten brutally in a public square in front of a large crowd. The people in this crowd just... stand and watch. They get their phones out and record it.
It is reasoned by one of the main characters that they act this way because they simply cannot process what is going on. The concept of this happening is so divorced from the reality they live in, it provokes little to no fear/horror/disgust/whatever response in them.
People nearby clearly do. The people near the camera probably have no idea what happened. In most countries, gun crime is uncommon and people would just be confused what had just happened.
To add to the rarity of gun violence, there is sismic risk and people try to ubderstand what's the current danger before reacting.
For instance if the smoke came from something bursting because of a starting earthquake, avoiding the surrounding building and regrouping in a clear zone would be the right course of action.
Japan has some super strict gun laws. The onlookers probably had no experience with firearm violence and didn't know to run away. More of a deer in headlights kind of shock when they saw the smoke.
I guess "ghost gun" violence like this will become more normal in countries with restrictive gun laws as societies break down when the effects of climate change are really felt.
Violent crime is generally very rare in Japan, but particularly gun violence is near nonexistent. There have been years in recent history where firearm offenses number in the single digits.
He had security. The guy got apprehended immediately after. Clearly they weren’t trained to deal with guns and/or were incompetent to not be aware of their surroundings.
He was still a powerful figure in .JP politics and was speaking at a campaign event when he was shot. He served something like 6 consecutive terms and only left office for health reasons, but he was still trying to push agendas through.
Other than that, who knows. I'm sure that various US politicians like Nixon and Reagan still have enemies even though they are both long since in the ground.
He was still politically active, by publicly pushing his agenda, and by exerting his influence on other cabinet members as a senior leader of the ruling party.
my first guess is that it was a militarist gunman who was unhappy with not-enough-militarism from Abe, and, there must be a social group associated here, everything is social, including being a militarist. real information welcome
Beyond the still active politician arguments: terrorism and revenge. Also the kind of people who do this thing often aren’t really driven by things most of us would call rational.
Still a powerful political figure. Comes from a very influential political family - grandfather and father were both politicians. His brother is the current minister of defense.
He's still a powerful political figure. He even might have chance to become a candidate or influencing the decision on who gonna be candidate from his party.
Reading through history books I had thought, wow what crazy times - A Global pandemic (Spanish Flu), revolutionary technology (Aeroplane, etc.), Killing of influential people and then war.
We are halfway there and signs don't look good. Am I being too pessimistic?
Historically we have lived in fairly anomalous times. However, we entered the nuclear age which changed a lot of things. So I’m still unsure if it’s an illusion or the new reality.
Of course when it comes to nukes the dark reality is that everyone has to be successful at not using one (because then they are all used) every single day for eternity. That seems impossible and an eventuality.
I'm a bit concerned tbh. I've read a lot about how NSDAP in Germany and league leaders in France reused old ideas from their adversaries (anarchist and communists) to sell themselves as 'concerned citizens'.
Interestingly, some sources are reporting he was shot with a improvised shotgun. These are very easy to make if you can acquire bullets -- a strong pipe, a nail and a cap are all you need. Where did he procure bullets from though, I wonder?
I work with an old guy who set out to make his own "shotgun" when he was 9. He took a piece of plumbing pipe with an end cap, drilled two holes near the end for the electrodes (pencil lead), and then packed it with a few hundred match heads and some BB's. He ran wire from the electrodes to his safety spot behind a berm, and touched it off with a battery. It blew apart his target, and he said the smoke could be smelled across the entire farm.
If a 9 year old could figure it out in the 1950's, I'm sure an adult, hell bent on murder, could figure it out today.
FWIW while guns are extremely regulated here in Japan, they aren't flat out illegal or "unobtainable". I'm no expert wrt bullets but I imagine if there's a way to procure a gun, people must be able to buy bullets too. From there, you just need a bit of smuggling around/blackmarket stuff.
Some years ago in Denmark, at a European championships shooting sports event, I met a Japanese competitor who mentioned that they must return every single spent casing from their previous purchase of ammunition before being cleared for a new purchase. He underlined that it's causing a lot of trouble in certain shooting disciplines, with marksmen ending up manically searching for their empty casings at the range, and that even the Japanese military is subjected to regulations forcing them to leave not a single spent casing around. Unlike how it's done in every country here in Europe, they apparently regulate/count ammunition sales down to each individual cartridge.
The correct term is a CARTRIDGE. The bullet is the projectile attached at the end. Perhaps he used home-made black powder (since people reported dense white smoke), but how he fashioned primers or something else to ignite it with is beyond me.
Yes, and it wasn't 3d printed like the "scary" stories we keep reading about. If you start banning 3d printers you may as well ban Home depot or anywhere you can buy a metal pipe.
Readit News
RIP Abe, you weren't the greatest but nobody deserves to go that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
There’s a middle ground, the US approach of putting your head into the ground unless a donor can benefit financially isn’t necessarily true for the entire world.
Says you. I believe he was one of the greatest PM they have had.
Apparently the Japanese people think so as well because he was the longest serving.
Your entitled to your own opinion, but don't pass it off as fact, and it's not a great time to insert it imo.
Dead Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics
> IMF affirmed that Japan's nominal GDP contracted by $1.8 trillion during 2012–2015 while real GDP contracted at an annual rate of 6.8 percent[58] in the second quarter of 2014, after the Consumption Tax hike came into effect in April. This fall is the worst since the devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster[59][60] hit Japan in the first quarter of 2011 when the GDP shrank by an annualised 6.9 percent.
So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami.
That said, he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.
This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).
This is typical of todays debate in the West, not solve the real issue, instead offer some sort of band aid solution and completely ignore the real issue.
Japanese is a population of about 126 million living on size of Norway, a country of 5.4 million inhabitants.
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Very low birth replacement rates, very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale, Sony et al being beaten by Intel to the correct Silicon Valley model, and so forth all contribute to contracting GDP quite a bit.
EDIT: This is not to say I think Japan has the wrong idea or whatever; I agree that chasing GDP is not some end-all be-all thing. I'm just saying that while I don't regard Abe as a genius economist, I don't think it's too fair he get a ton of blame either given that his country's demographics, social model, and other factors likely contributed far more towards the inertia of a shrinking economy.
These are all things that Abe’s government and policies strongly supported.
There is more to life than trying to get the made up number that is GDP to print a positive number every quarter.
Japan sits 62nd out of 153 in the 2020 World Happiness Report at a score of 5.871 (range 7.809-2.567, normalizes to 0.63)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020_re...
Happier than average, but that average includes countries wracked by war, poverty and corruption.
Edit: the 2022 World Happiness Report ranks Japan at 54th out of 146 with a score of 6.039 normalized to 0.67, an improvement, and is now comparable to Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Honduras.
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-...
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/japans-living-standards-ar...
Deleted Comment
If you look at the trend you can clearly see the nominal GDP fell back down to trend after a massive spike during the high yen period post-GFC.
I lived in Japan most of that period and no one thought of it as a recession. Unemployment fell to essentially zero, the stock market boomed, the lower yen was welcomed and ultimately “real” (PPP) GDP rose.
There’s a reason Abe was able to serve as PM for so long in a country otherwise notorious for cycling switching leaders.
The economy ACTUALLY only shrank by 0.1% in 2014 but then grew by 0.4%,0.2%,0.5% the following three years, which is actually a lot for Japan.
But the economy is a very basic, essential thing. If it is bad, things are indeed bad for many people, which counts more to them than the great politic.
Johnson would not have to worry about anything, if the UK's economy would be running smoothly. Which it does not and the brexit is basically still unsolved and a great feeling of insecurity remains. This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake, and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information.
Mistakes are by definition only known to be mistakes after the fact. If you know before you do something that it’s going to fail then it is not a mistake.
That's ridiculous - everyone makes decisions under incomplete information - does that mean we can't be blamed for anything ?
They could have tried it in a small area beforehand, instead.
This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something!
Improving %metric% thanks to general development and despite the dictator in power is very much a thing, just as declining %metric% could have been the best possible outcome.
We /assume/ they have popular support, in reality we don't really know.
That's an odd take considering Japan's economy has been contracting for 25 years. Can you be specific on how his economic contractions was different than those those before (or after) him?
- Demographic crunch, as mentioned. The country not descending into uncontrolled decline may already been a decent achievement
- Focus on quality. This is unique to Japan and runs counter capitalist growth stories. Japanese consumers value quality. a lot. But it’s bad for business in the growth sense, you don’t need to buy a new fridge for 10-15 years because it works and isn’t made obsolete artificially, Japanese consumers are happy, growth : consumption metrics are not.
Quality is just not captured as a variable in the western / American way of looking at economic health. Not having train delays, having great customer service, no forced obsolete products, high reliability in services and products are not reflected / incentivized in that model - they don’t exist but that’s not how Japan works.
Japan has issues, quite a few, but it’s not nearly the hellhole American economic publications love to make it out for decades now. It may be a nightmare scenarios for the get rich quick dudes with US MBAs, but quality of life is pretty decent for a country this far down the demographic curve.
We can only really judge how they fared when America enters that demographic slope.
I don't think you get assassinated for economic policies (unless you really impoverish a large section of the population). I think it's more likely he got assassinated for some fairly random loony reason by someone unhinged or for his non-economy related right wing policies (e.g. on defense and foreign policy).
Japan's economy is in shambles.
A currency is a tool of the economy controllable by a central bank, not a competition (otherwise everyone would d shoot for high deflation).
The instantaneous exchange rate between two currencies does not give any information about the strength or weakness of the economies that operate on those currencies.
https://nitter.cz/yamaneko2011/status/1545297780562096128
The guy straight up walks behind him but misses the first shot. Keeps walking but Abe turns around and then the 2nd shot hits him point blank
In this scene, set in a utopian, crime-free society (at least on the surface), a woman is beaten brutally in a public square in front of a large crowd. The people in this crowd just... stand and watch. They get their phones out and record it.
It is reasoned by one of the main characters that they act this way because they simply cannot process what is going on. The concept of this happening is so divorced from the reality they live in, it provokes little to no fear/horror/disgust/whatever response in them.
An assassination by gunfire in a country where gun deaths don't happen is the perfect excuse for rubbernecking.
For instance if the smoke came from something bursting because of a starting earthquake, avoiding the surrounding building and regrouping in a clear zone would be the right course of action.
Dead Comment
I guess "ghost gun" violence like this will become more normal in countries with restrictive gun laws as societies break down when the effects of climate change are really felt.
https://nitter.cz/pic/media%2FFXH24fkWYAAZTTm.jpg%3Fname%3Do...
https://nitter.cz/pic/media%2FFXH24y9XoAITMIM.jpg%3Fname%3Do...
https://nitter.cz/pic/media%2FFXH25G7WYAI8o2D.jpg%3Fname%3Do...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-...
Shootings are pretty rare in the developed world.
He doesn't have any power anymore right? Just a pure revenge thing? A powerful group sending a warning message to the current PM?
Other than that, who knows. I'm sure that various US politicians like Nixon and Reagan still have enemies even though they are both long since in the ground.
This event can be used in multitude of forms for a multitude of results by a multitude of people.
Apparently he was "dissatisfied" with Abe and wanted to kill him.
"Earlier, it was reported that the suspect decided to kill Abe because he disagreed with his policies.
According to the NHK, the police now say that Yamagami told investigators he had a grudge against Abe and decided to kill him."
https://www.jantakareporter.com/entertainment/who-is-shinzo-...
Deleted Comment
is trending on Twitter Japan: "#We want democracy, not violence"
Reading through history books I had thought, wow what crazy times - A Global pandemic (Spanish Flu), revolutionary technology (Aeroplane, etc.), Killing of influential people and then war.
We are halfway there and signs don't look good. Am I being too pessimistic?
Uhm, you are mixing facts a bit: aeroplane came before WWI; the shooting of an archduke started WWI, but the flu only arrived at the end of the war.
Of course when it comes to nukes the dark reality is that everyone has to be successful at not using one (because then they are all used) every single day for eternity. That seems impossible and an eventuality.
Dead Comment
We are in the denial phase. Next comes panic, and then desperation.
when there's a terrorist attack, "don't let them win, don't be afraid", and now you're saying people should be afraid?
I work with an old guy who set out to make his own "shotgun" when he was 9. He took a piece of plumbing pipe with an end cap, drilled two holes near the end for the electrodes (pencil lead), and then packed it with a few hundred match heads and some BB's. He ran wire from the electrodes to his safety spot behind a berm, and touched it off with a battery. It blew apart his target, and he said the smoke could be smelled across the entire farm.
If a 9 year old could figure it out in the 1950's, I'm sure an adult, hell bent on murder, could figure it out today.
Looks very improvised indeed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXH0s0YXoAAehab?format=jpg
You can see the battery here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXH0s0YXoAAehab?format=jpg
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/Ex-PM-Abe-shot-from-be...