Hat tip to workingman for this little pictorial history.
Hiroshima 66 years later vs Detroit 66 years later
We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in August 1945 after the explosion of atomic bombs.
However, we know little about the progress made by the people of that land during the past 65 years.
HIROSHIMA - 66 YEARS LATER
Detroit 66 years after Hiroshima
What has caused more long term destruction? Nuclear weapons or U.S. Government Welfare programs created to buy the votes of those who want someone to take care of them?
Japan does not have a welfare system.
Work for it or do without.
And I don’t think there has ever been a better explanation of the importance of incentive than this example These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
AWD says:
Brilliant comparison. Of course the Japanese don’t have a Welfare system. That would weaken and destroy their nation. Asians would NEVER think of somebody else paying for them to sit on their asses and get free entitlements. As far as I know, they don’t have labor unions either, which would bankrupt their government and industry. The Japanese government is bankrupt, at least not from public employee unions.
I wonder what the U.S. of A could have done with the $16 trillion spent on Welfare. Any suggestions?
Americans help rebuild Japan by buying Toyota’s, Honda’s, Nissan’s and Lexus’s, and just about everything else, then got double teamed by China. It’s a fitting tribute that Detroit, the former auto city, is a wasteland. Four more years of Obama, and every city will become a wasteland. Forward!
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17th July 2012 at 9:28 pm
llpoh says:
Japan is fucked largely as a result of being unable to continuously expand their population, and not as a result of a lazy population – to many elderly, and not enough kids. A large part of their society seems to be sexless – young folks there don’t want it, and have no intention of having kids. A truly crappy political situation has also contributed to their imminent demise.
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17th July 2012 at 9:34 pm
underfire says:
I have cussed the US welfare system, as an agriculture employer. Unemployment out the roof, but can I get someone other than Hispanics to come do this work? What a hope! It’s been a battle for thirty years, even the farm kids head to town.
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17th July 2012 at 9:36 pm
underfire says:
Does anyone feel just this small compulsion to go bomb the shit out of that city again? Or maybe it’s to bomb the shit out of Detroit. I’m not sure.
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17th July 2012 at 9:50 pm
Chicago999444 says:
Ilpoh, the Japanese have, as individuals and each in her or his own way and time, recognized that Japan just can’t support a larger population, though most individuals are most likely not thinking in terms of what the islands can support, but what they can personally support. You can understand why people might not be chomping at the bit to have kids when strawberries cost $9 a quart, jobs and money are tight, and a well-paid “salary man” can barely afford a three room apartment in Tokyo for his family of four.
Reasonable, prudent people act in keeping with their individual situations. No one is going to breed beyond her ability to care for her kids in an economically stagnating country where jobs are in short supply and there is no fall-back for hard times, just because some people think it is good for the country. Which it really isn’t. Japan has reached it’s carrying capacity and its particular history shows that Japanese people, who are very good at managing tight resources, began to employ fertility control in the 17th century in response to the depletion of essential resources.
Only people with a welfare mentality ignore the “market signals” of rising prices for essential goods and services, falling incomes, and ongoing dearth of employment opportunities, and keep on breeding in the belief that the welfare system will take care of them if Jesus doesn’t.
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17th July 2012 at 9:55 pm
Stigmation says:
I work for a Japanese company and I can tell you this. Loyalty goes both ways. If you are a good worker in Japan, for a large corporation. You have a job for LIFE. If you are a good worker in America, they send your job to China and cut your pension. To say that is not the way it is is bullshit. We cannot all work for banks… Japanese workers are no smarter, nor harder working than American workers (maybe pre 1980) the fact is, their government had their backs, while our government sold labor to the lowest bidder. For profit. You must realize that any country that decides that everything is for a buck is doomed. Don’t blame the people who don’t have jobs here. Try blaming the one’s that allowed those jobs to be sent away.
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17th July 2012 at 9:55 pm
Stigmation says:
Another thing, I have been called a socialist. I am not. I am a realist. We are all not born with the same gifts to take care of ourselves. The job of a government, at least the way I see it, is not to put their hands down my pants, tax me to death, regulate me to oblivion, but rather to ensure the population of the country has a fair shake for labor.
That is a fucking joke. We have allowed multinationals to exploit the world for profit, so we can by the shit with money we don’t have. I really tire of hearing the old neo-con saying ” If you don’t want to work starve” This may be true in some cases, but I don’t think all. I think our government has sold ALOT of GOOD people down the river. For for what? So Jamie Dimon can be a bigger billionaire?
There has always been corruption in any system, but the one we are in is beyond laughable. We should stop attacking the poor, the rich, the middle class and go after the people who started the problem fucking Washington DC is a damn fine place to start.
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17th July 2012 at 10:06 pm
underfire says:
Chicago…+1. We’ve been stimulating (subsidizing) the entitlement class for decades. Sooner or later this Frankenstein was going to turn on us.
Stigmation….. I have a hard time imagining this process not having involved global equilibrium, survival of the fittest and hungriest.
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17th July 2012 at 10:14 pm
Chicago999444 says:
Yes, Underfire, that’s what we’ve been doing since 1935, with the result that our population is growing.. mostly among the people least able to take care of themselves or contribute to anybody’s old age stipend
We also have developed a system of middle-class entitlements that encourage irresponsible behavior while punishing prudence and responsibility. The home mortgage deduction and “free” public education encourage middle income people to borrow sums of money that cripple them in saving for hard times, and to have more children than they can comfortably care for with their own resources. And now we have a population of people rapidly dropping out of the middle class, with three or more kids, no savings, and massive stacks of debt.
If there is any group of people ill-equipped to run an economy and promulgate far-reaching policies that incentivize specific personal behaviors, it’s the government and its economists, who are about as equipped as tea leaf readers to pass on such matters as how many children people should have.
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17th July 2012 at 10:55 pm
llpoh says:
Chicago – that is why I said they are “unable” to expand their population as opposed to saying that they are “unwilling”. Their island is overpopulated already (not to mention is virtually devoid of natural resources), and perhaps in the long, long term what they have done will work out for them.
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17th July 2012 at 11:00 pm
Ron says:
I have read this about many countrys.Here many people say its to expensive,actually its not.What it is ,is inconvenient for selfish people who want to party and have no responsibilitys.And looking around theres plenty of people who shouldnt have had kids.
Like most of our country Detroit is just rotten from all the greed.
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17th July 2012 at 12:17 am
AKAnon says:
Sort of (but not really) on topic: In the mid/late 50s, Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth/Desoto (that’s your Detroit connection) agreed to buy and recycle steel from the wreckage of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. My project car probably contains some of that glow-in-the-dark metal. I just hope to get it running and on the road before gasoline become obsolete or banned. I have had higher priorities the last few years than tinkering. Like preparing for basic survival.
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17th July 2012 at 2:07 am
IndenturedServant says:
For some reason the pictures won’t load for me so I Googled the article title. It looks like this article and the pictures could be a hoax that is several years old. Some claim the pictures are actually of Yokohama.
While the comparison itself is interesting, methinks Japan is just as fucked as we are, perhaps more so due to Fukishima.
I_S
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17th July 2012 at 5:07 am
IndenturedServant says:
underfire says:
“Does anyone feel just this small compulsion to go bomb the shit out of that city again?”
Uhh……no. But I do feel like smoking most of the ME/NA, reducing the population of radical islam to a couple dozen breeding pairs and then giving them the choice of jihad or rebuilding their population.
I_S
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17th July 2012 at 5:37 am
IndenturedServant says:
Stigmation says:
“Another thing, I have been called a socialist. I am not. I am a realist. We are all not born with the same gifts to take care of ourselves. The job of a government, at least the way I see it, is not to put their hands down my pants, tax me to death, regulate me to oblivion, but rather to ensure the population of the country has a fair shake for labor.”
If you are a realist then you must realize that life is unfair. The government CANNOT give something to anyone without first TAKING IT AWAY from someone else. It is not ok for the govt to take anything from me. In order to ensure that the “population of the country has a fair shake for labor” the HAVE to put their hands down your pants, tax you to death and regulate you to oblivion. That is how it works! Give govt a fucking millimeter and they take 10,000 miles! Liberal or socialist (about the same in my book) beliefs are in my opinion, espoused with the best of intentions. I think their hearts are in the right place. However, more often than not, the math NEVER pencils out! They NEVER seem to see anticipate the unintended consequences. Case in point, ObamaCare. It is now law but as far as I understand it, no bills have been passed to fund it. How the fuck does that work? Oh yeah, I remember………..just fail to pass an actual budget for 3+ years and hope no one notices!
I think it was Michael Savage who said that “liberalism is a mental disorder”. In the face of overwhelming evidence in the affirmative, I tend to agree.
I_S
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17th July 2012 at 5:55 am
ThePessimisticChemist says:
My wife used to always tells people she’s a liberal, I finally had to explain to her that just because you think gay marriage is ok doesn’t mean you are a liberal.
More on topic:
Just why did Japan’s economy stall out as hard as it did? I mean, they have been on the decline for quite a while or so I’m led to believe.
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17th July 2012 at 9:55 am
llpoh says:
TPC – 1) Japan has some MAJOR demographic issues to contend with, which are causing a lot of problems – ie an aging population, no immigrants allowed, and a birth rate far below replacement 2) They are a nation of savers – so when the real estate bubble burst a while back, they did what all reasonable people would do, they hung onto their money for a rainy day – so no expansionary debt-driven economy developed, 3) they have even more worthless politicians than the US, which is saying something indeed, 4) the make decisions by consensus – and when consensus cannot be reached, no decision is made, 5) their banks have been in poo city for ages, and they have not been required to write down the real estate assets that failed, 6) many of the corps are in the same boat as #5, 7) they have no natural resources to speak of, 8) they have outsourced a lot of production to lower cost nations (Japan is very expensive), etc etc etc. They are a bug searching for a windscreen. If they weren’t such frugal, hard-working sorts, they would have found it already.
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17th July 2012 at 7:25 pm
Novista says:
8)
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17th July 2012 at 12:25 am
Zarathustra says:
I have worked on several projects for the Japanese. I found them very loyal…after the first one I was never again faced with competitive bidding for anything subsequent. I also found them frustrating. Communication was atrocious. I learned that after a presentation to their mucky mucks and they said, “thank you for that presentation, we will take your ideas very seriously,” it meant “we think you’re full of shit and we’ll do it your way. But they have other virtues. They want the latest technology and will pay for it. They never berate anyone in public (but they do plenty of it in private). Japanese will only tell you what they really think about anything when they are drunk. They somewhat resemble Germans in that regard.
All in all, I think we are natural allies. Our virtues are their weaknesses and vice versa. I also love the way they articulate their language…the way Japanese men speak from their gut while Japanese women speak through their teeth.
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17th July 2012 at 1:42 am
Zarathustra says:
your=our
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17th July 2012 at 1:43 am
Zarathustra says:
I just remembered one moment I thought I’d share. After a meeting with the Japanese where they changed a processing line for the third time, during construction, I was walking to the parking lot with the supervisor of the equipment rigger. I asked him what he thought of it. He told me, “If this is the way the Japanese operate, then it’s no surprise that we won the big one.”
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17th July 2012 at 2:06 am
flash says:
After Japan’s real estate bubble burst in the 80′s they did not rush out to blow another. I have limited knowledge of Japanese culture, but it seems from afar that they have chosen real growth even at the price of stagnation over the western growth model of “irrational exuberance”.
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17th July 2012 at 6:03 am