Politics and Power: Creating Bankruptcy and a Real Nuclear Disaster in Japan

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history - Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831)


A couple of recent articles on Japan have hit my eye. They both have to do with money and how poorly the Japanese government have handled the economy and how the regular Japanese is paying the price.


The first article is about another doofus who thinks that a Japanese government takeover of TEPCO, the company that owns the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, is the answer to our problems. Read this article and wonder no more how this guy never got a job in the real world.

The traditionally left wing Asahi Newspaper reports about how Tadashi Maeda, an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, has proposed the nationalization of all nuclear power plants in Japan as a means to secure the long-term viability of atomic energy:

(Tadashi) Maeda, chief of the Corporate Planning Department of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, said during a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun that the risk of a disastrous nuclear accident resulting in a tremendous amount of monetary compensation argues for the nationalization of nuclear power generation.

Tadashi Maeda is a

blood sucking tax feeder or just plan stupid?

Question: Why should nuclear power plants be nationalized?

Answer: Atomic energy should be in the hands of a state-run operator of nuclear power plants. It is important for the government to assume full responsibility for (their safe operation). The state-run company would acquire the nuclear power operations from utilities and sell electricity to TEPCO and other electric power suppliers as a wholesaler. The profits from the power sales would be used to pay compensation for the nuclear disaster. This way, the financial burden imposed on the public through higher electricity bills and other forms would be minimized. This system would also contribute to ensuring a stable power supply.

Riiiiight! Get that? What he means to say is that the state run company would be a middle man and sell the electricity to TEPCO who would then sell it back to you and me. Now, how in the world will having the idiots in government as a middleman, and taking a cut off the top, going to keep costs low? Isn't this the very same government that wants to double our Sales Taxes? 


This sounds like another sham to try to get more money from the public and private enterprise without it looking like what it actually is: Another tax guised in the mask of protecting the public.   


Now, who in their right mind would recommend such a thing? How could anyone think that the government could run anything and not turn it into a boondoggle with massive red ink? How could anyone think that adding a government run middleman will do anything except increase costs and prices?


TEPCO didn't get to be the biggest power company in all of Asia and the 4th largest power company in the entire world by having a bunch of lazy, useless bureaucrats running their organization.


Who could possibly think it would be beneficial to anyone to have the Japanese government running our nuclear industries? Look at how well the Japanese government has done at running the economy and the social welfare programs over these last 20 + years! What a marvelous job they've done there. Why, we're only at debt that is 225% of annual GDP.


Imagine the work of wonders these geniuses can do if they get a hold of the nuclear industry. If having the Japanese government run the nuclear industry is such a good idea, why stop there? Why doesn't the Japanese government just nationalize all industry, from cars, to electronics, to farming, to broadcasting, to the Internet, and even to production of candies for kids in order to protect the public and companies from high costs?


Hell, nationalize everything and we'll have a workers paradise!


Just like North Korea or the old Soviet Union. Paradise!


How could I have been such a fool not to realize it all this time? That's it! The answer to our problems! Nationalize everything!


You see, I'm married and my wife gives me an allowance to live on, like most Japanese wives do for their Japanese husbands. But, darned if this allowance hasn't been going down annually over these last twenty years. This situation is really getting desperate.


Bloomberg reports:


Japanese men have seen allowances wither to the least in three decades as their wives pare household spending in an economy mired in deflation. Known in Japan as salarymen, the workers receive 36,500 yen ($452) per month for pocket money, amounting to $15 a day and the smallest amount since 1982, according to a survey by Shinsei Financial Co. released today. Japanese wives typically manage their husbands' earnings. Japan's growth of less than 1 percent per year in the past 10 years has crimped pay, forcing housewives to cut back on pocket money and exacerbating the deflation that has plagued the economy for more than a decade. Wages have been dropping since the March 11 earthquake and household sentiment is near a two- year low, making a consumer-driven economic rebound less likely.  


In my case, I used to get about $50 for a night's out at the pub. But recently, over these last ten ~ fifteen years,  that has dropped to about $35 a night as well as cut from four night's a week to two.


This has been during the bursting of the so-called Japanese Bubble Economy. Just like the west and the USA has done over the last three years, the Japanese government has blown hundreds of billions of dollars propping up Zombie banks and defacto insolvent institutions. They did this by borrowing and using tax money.


They used our tax money and have now borrowed us and our children into a debt that they can - we can - never repay. 


One day soon the piper will need to be paid. 


That is the day Japan goes bankrupt....


And idiots like Tadashi Maeda think the Japanese government should take over our industries? See? We never do learn from history.