Formerly proud Toyota is staring in the eyes of another multi-billion dollar loss for the new 2009 fiscal year, the Nikkei [sub] reports. The fiscal year lasts through March 2010. According to estimates, the world’s largest automaker will report a loss of around $5 billion for the 2008 fiscal that just ended on March 31. For the new year, the loss may be steeper.
A survey of 19 brokerages by Reuters Estimates agrees. It sees the operating loss at the world’s largest automaker expanding to a median $5.5 billion in the current year, from an estimated $4.5 billion in the year ended last month.
Analysts say (duh) the outcome will “depend on the exchange rate, the global vehicle demand and how much Toyota will be able to reduce its costs.” (Who wants my résumé?)
Toyota group companies are forecast to sell about 6.5 million vehicles this fiscal year, falling below 7 million units for the first time in six years. ToMoCo sees demand in the US likely to remain stagnant in the current year. Sales in Japan and Europe are projected to fall below previous-year levels.
The weakening of the yen just in time for the end of the Japanese 2008 fiscal year spared the Japanese auto industry an even bigger disaster. A dollar could be had for as little as 86 yen in the December-January period, giving Nipponese bean counters ulcers. On critical March 31, the greenback stood at 99 yen—no doubt with a little help from its friends at Tokyo’s Central Bank. Now it’s holding steady at its normal level of 100 yen to the Yankee dollar.
According to the Nikkei [sub], the weakening of the yen since the beginning of the year is believed to have pushed up the combined operating earnings of the seven Japanese automakers by about $1.2 billion for the January-March quarter. Every little billion helps.
Toyota is the most affected by foreign exchange fluctuations among all of Japan’s listed firms. Each 1 yen change in the value of the Japanese currency against the dollar impacts its annual profit by 40 billion yen.
You will see many Toyota execs go down to the local Shinto shrine, throw some coins in the bucket, ring the bell and mumble a silent prayer for 110 yen to the dollar. Amaterasu, kudasai, it would be most welcome, domo arigatou gozaimasu.
Let this be a lesson to the rest of the world.
If Americans cannot easily and mindlessly buy your products on credit…YOU WILL GO UNDER.
If The Japanese auto manufacturers weren’t quietly getting government help, right now, they’d probably have spent all their capital and they’d be bankrupt. But, since the Japanese and Chinese already have socialized medicine, I guess there isn’t as much of an uproar.
Common story, overpriced product relying on fading reputation rather than content. As they idolize money, the end justifies the means.
@flashpoint
But, since the Japanese and Chinese already have socialized medicine, I guess there isn’t as much of an uproar.
Please source this statement. I am married to a Japanese and live in China.
Japan’s National Health Insurance Plan is a public medical insurance program in which all people residing in Japan must enroll if they do not have another form insurance. You are free to choose. NHI is not free, actually its premiums are more expensive than a private insurance plan. NHI covers only 70% of the medical expenses. It is everything but socialized.
In supposedly socialist China, the situation is much worse. Only 6% of urban Chinese and 8% of rural citizens have coverage. If you are sick and go to a hospital, you better bring cash. And you better have friends or family who can bring food, because the hospital is not there to feed you. According to the VOA, “China has promised to improve health care services to all residents by 2020.”
It is unnerving to think that much of the world’s economic growth over the last 20 years has come solely from easy credit in the US. What happens if Americans grow some brains and start living within our means? A return to 3rd world status for many countries?
BERTEL
I lived in Shanghai China in FuDan University too and I’ve used their healthcare system when I got a bone fracture. It cost me all of $200 to have a cast put on and then to have it put back on 3 months later. In that $200 I got medicine and blood thinners.
I was a complete foreigner. Not special at all. And I got medium quality, immediate healthcare.
It is no mystery that part of the Big 3’s financial problems have been paying healthcare costs in addition to paying legacy costs and when America does get socialized medicine, some of those costs will be relieved from employers – unless they are taxed more for it, but even then, a healthy worker = a better worker.
You can argue costs, but what you can’t argue is that America’s infant mortality rate and a number of other standings such as life expectancy/ obesity rate/etc are well below that of the Japanese. And yes, I do lump obesity in there because it is a healthcare issue.
If The Japanese auto manufacturers weren’t quietly getting government help, right now, they’d probably have spent all their capital and they’d be bankrupt.
Wow…. just wow….
Like Bertel Schmitt, I’m pretty familiar with Japan, and spend quite a bit of time there every year…. Have for decades now. Toyota probably has more money than the Japanese government -even now. The Japanese government has been broke for years. And, for that matter – if Toyota needed money, think you’d be willing to lend money to Toyota if you owned a bank? They don’t need government money.
If you really, really, want to boil it all down – it comes to this:
Japanese workers feel that they are part of their company, and they want to do what they can to make the company do better. The engineers want to design better products and the workers care about what they build…. because they believe it reflects on them.
The American Autoworker concept of “Putting it to the Man” is pretty much untranslatable.
Your grumbling sulking attitude of blaming somebody else for problems (management, the Japanese, the Republicans) is what got Detroit into this mess. It’s always somebody else’s fault. “Of course we build shit cars – the Management, the Japanese, the Republicans) are screwing us!”.
Bah!
I used to live in Japan. Bertel is correct. The national health program in Japan is both an alternative to private care and also very expensive.
OK, if you guys want to argue that Japan’s healthcare is more expensive, then I’ll accept your argument, if….
you can provide me with a cost analysis for each company: Toyota, Honda, Nissan, GM, Ford and Chrysler that show’s me what their average expense is per year per worker for each company.
I don’t put too much faith in “personal accounts” of how expensive healthcare is because that is subjective.
If you can show me the average cost per worker for each company and provide links that I can reference THEN I WILL SUBMIT TO THE VALIDITY OF YOUR ARGUMENT.
I think that’s fair…
I lived in Shinjuku Ku, Tokyo.
I didn’t have a chance to use their health system nor did I inquire with people there about it.
ConstructionContractor: “I used to live in Japan. Bertel is correct. The national health program in Japan is both an alternative to private care and also very expensive.”
It seems the Japanese, unlike many American politicians, have recognized the crucial issue of adverse selection. When you sell dollars for dimes the customers will be delighted but you’ll never break even.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2005/08/toyota-reveals-limits-of-great.html
Toyota has its limits it would seem.
I lived in Shanghai China in FuDan University too and I’ve used their healthcare system when I got a bone fracture. It cost me all of $200 to have a cast put on and then to have it put back on 3 months later. In that $200 I got medicine and blood thinners.
That doesn’t prove that there is a socialized system, it proves that services tend to be cheaper in developing countries than they are industrialized ones.
They seem cheap to you because you are accustomed to earning dollars and are converting local prices into dollars.
Those prices aren’t cheap to the local farmer, who would be lucky to earn that amount after several months of work, and who may go without treatment entirely. China’s per capita GDP is 1/7th that of the US; they don’t have the wealth of the US (yet), and what they do have is not exactly equally distributed.
You’re mixing apples and oranges here. Services in developing countries seem cheap when the prices are converted into dollars. If you had to earn local working class wages, you wouldn’t find it a bargain.
Bertel didn’t say that the Japanese National Health Service was expensive per se, just more expensive than the private plans. Both are much cheaper than what we spend per person. Every country is cheaper, by a big margin. Our overpriced health care is literally killing us.
If anybody here proposed the Japanese system of health care, right wing demagogues would scream that it was Marxism or Fascism or what have you.
Japan doesn’t have socialized medicine. It does, in my personal experience, have much lower cost health care than the US.
Some years ago I had my appendix removed while on a business trip in Tokyo. I was most definitely not a “medical tourist”, just unlucky.
The hospital where I was diagnosed, operated on and recovered in was a much more frugal affair than anything I have seen in the US. There was no complicated web of bills, just one bill at the end for everything including the surgeon, anesthesiologist, radiology, room, board, pharmacy, etc. The total cash out the door cost was about $3,500. They insisted on having the money wire-transferred in before letting me go :).
When I returned to the US, I learned that a similar situation would have racked up at least $20,000-$30,000 in costs at home. Japanese health care delivers radically better bang-for-the-buck(Yen) than does its US counterpart. But, Japan’s medical care is not socialized. It isn’t a single payer system and the hospitals, etc. are not government run.
The US has much to offer the rest of the world, and the rest of the world has much to offer the US. How about looking around and finding out what works best instead of sticking our heads in the not-invented-here sand, eh?
Bertel is correct. The national health program in Japan is both an alternative to private care and also very expensive.
Yes, on both points….
[In Japan] Premiums are fixed by law to be about 8% of an employee’s salary, and must be split equally between the employer and employee….Co-pays are similarly affordable and predictable. For outpatient services, you pay 30% of the cost no matter what plan you’re in. Inpatient services are either 20% or 30%, and primary care, doctor visits, etc. are 10%.
http://healthcare.change.org/blog/view/turning_japanese_we_could_do_a_lot_worse
Most middle-class people in Japan have both the national health insurance and a supplemental insurance.
Frankly, being on the national plan alone is kind of grim by American standards. Large wards full of beds – bring your own pajamas and wash them… pay for a tv by the hour (rolled in on a stand)… no dividers between beds unless visitors ask.
You want a nice private room, nice food, and a lazy boy recliner next to your bed….well, better have your own insurance.
By the way, there was a scandal in Japan when I was last there. Seems that a lot of women who had complicated pregnancies were dying – from lack of medical care. Because of national health insurance, they could go to any hospital… that would accept them. However, the reimbursement for pregnancy care and delivery is a fixed rate. So hospitals would tell them to go somewhere else…and hey – they could go to any hospital, right. Except that no hospital wanted them.
National healthcare ain’t cheaper in the end, for the middle class, since you pay the government AND a private insurer, and there’s a lower standard of care for most people that you’re used to.
Jack – you’re right on the costs… but your nice treatment can be put down to the ‘gaijin factor’ – they’re really kind to foreigners…. I get ‘upgrade’ treatment quite often just for being a foreigner…although less than I did 25 years ago, the more they know us…. :-)
FWIW
@flashpoint: You cite your $200 experience with a broken foot, and a few posts later you don’t put too much faith in “personal accounts” of how expensive healthcare is because that is subjective. So what is it? Are you doubting yourself now?
Chinese healthcare is cheap in the eyes of a foreigner, because a Chinese doctor makes maybe $800 a month (sometimes I consider getting a private surgeon…) They are doing a good job, and I have many friends, especially females, who come to China for a boobjob or to have their teeth fixed. They usually go home happy, better looking, and have more money in their pocket.
I also receive visits from American friends who have no health insurance at all, because they are self employed, or have been bitten by COBRA. My Chinese assistant leads them to good Chinese hospitals where they receive the royal treatment for maybe a tenth of what they pay in the US. It’s a bit of a stretch, but one could argue that the Chinese subsidize the mess of an American healthcare system.
But that’s not the topic. You claim that Japan and China have a socialized healthcare system, and you are plain wrong. They don’t. Having lived in China and Japan makes you twice as wrong. You’ve been there and you should know better. I visit Shinjuku also on occasion, but not to see the doctor.
Ah… Shinjuku after dark…. :-)
Purple ….everywhere….
@flashpoint:
You can argue costs, but what you can’t argue is that America’s infant mortality rate and a number of other standings such as life expectancy/ obesity rate/etc are well below that of the Japanese. And yes, I do lump obesity in there because it is a healthcare issue.
I just read with great amusement that you claim the US obesity rate is way below that of Japan. Are we talking the same planet? A person that is called “debu-debu” (fat) in Japan would be regarded as anorexic in the West. While you resided in Tokyo, have you ever had the joy of seeing a Japanese female in the buff? Guess not. In Shinjuku it’s possible for a fee.
As for infant mortality, the CIA factbook puts Japanese infant mortality at 2.79 per thousand, in the USA it is 6.26, China 20.25
Life expectancy Japan 80.7, USA 77.1, Source U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base.
And before I have my daily joyful look at a Japanese in the buff, the obesity data: The USA top the charts with 30.6% considered obese. Japan shares the bottom rank with Korea with 3.2% considered debu-debu. Source Nationmaster.
OK, you’re all arguing about health care, fine.
But what about the part about yen manipulation? About how the yen miraculously climbed from 86 to 99 against the dollar just in time for the end of the Japanese fiscal year?
I thought Japan did not manipulate their currency?
Where are the outraged denials of this?
About how the yen miraculously climbed from 86 to 99 against the dollar just in time for the end of the Japanese fiscal year?
A euro fell from $1.50 range to $1.25. Manipulation?
The price of oil fell from $145 to $40. Manipulation?
The Dow fell from 14,000 to under 7,000. Manipulation?
Your house has lost 30-40% of its value. Manipulation?
The yen is a floating currency. The free market ultimately determines its value. Governments can attempt to influence its value, but it is the market that ultimately decides on what a currency is worth on a given day based upon many factors.
People who bang on about yen manipulation frankly don’t know what they’re talking about. They undoubtedly read too many conspiracy websites for their own good, and don’t understand how currency markets work.
The yen was clearly overvalued when it was below Y90 to the dollar. It had surged in value to those levels because like the US dollar, it became a hedge against risk during the point at which the markets were pricing in the possibility of a depression.
As things calm down, the need for hedging declines. That makes the weakening of the yen quite logical. Had you understood this, you could have made some money on this in recent weeks.
Also, a decline in exports is bad for the Japanese economy. A weakening industrial base is going to encourage some flight from the yen, because for most currencies most of the time, changes in the exchange rate are a proxy for economic performance.
If Japan is sucking wind, holding yen doesn’t seem like such a great idea, which means that it is going to lose value against the dollar. It made sense when everyone was panicking, driving it to the high 80’s level, but that was a momentary bubble and it’s hissing out. Which is as it should be.
Bertel, I love the articles you write, but you’ve left me confused with this remark: “A person that is called “debu-debu” (fat) in Japan would be regarded as anorexic in the West. Have you ever had the joy of seeing a Japanese female in the buff? Guess not.”
Sadly, me neither. Everybody I saw walking around was well-clothed. But no one was pear-shaped. Anyway, does this mean that Japanese women now aspire to be skinnier than the (in)famous Twiggy? That gal never did much for me. Golly, nature intended women to have a wee bit of padding, if only for survival and childbearing. Though given the Japanese birth rate, maybe those have become secondary objectives…
Again, thanks for the fact-based reports.
@PCH101: 100% correct
Bertel, I’m on the edge of my seat over here. What ever became of the lad that was bitten by the Cobra?
Toyota’s troubles mount. Are they too big with too much production capacity?
@1169hp: I’m better with life expectancy, child mortality and debu-debu rates. If I’d know the reason for Toyota’s troubles, I wouldn’t be typing this. My private guess is that Toyota is overexposed to the toxic US market. Bites them in the rear now. Look at the dumb luck of VW: They effed up the US market, hence there isn’t much to lose. They are strong in China. They will be #2 this year.
Interesting.
Thanks.
So when will someone give me the cost per country for the healthcare of the workers in those auto companies I asked about?
Or should I hold my breath on that?
Japanese workers feel that they are part of their company, and they want to do what they can to make the company do better
Not to flame with a rather dumb question but would you say there is a still a sense of nationalistic pride mover in Japan? Since they were destroyed militarily, do the workers put their pride into their companies rather than into the military or something political? Obviously, their military is basically a glorified police force, maybe by serving in an international company such as Toyota they are bringing Japan’s might to foreign shores???
“…would you say there is a still a sense of nationalistic pride mover in Japan?”
That’s kind of hard to answer…. in the militaristic ‘conquering’ sense, I’d say “No”.World War II pretty well burned that out of them. In terms of wanting their businesses to ‘defeat’ other countries, I’d say “No” again…
I don’t think the idea of selling more cars than GM is a huge motivator for Toyota. They’re happy they did it, but it’s not an overwhelming goal that I’m aware of anyhow.
But the Japanese are a group culture, and have a strong sense of pride in their history – “Yamato-damashii” (The soul of old Japan) in the same sort of way Americans are proud of their wild-west history. So in terms of preferring to be Japanese rather than any other nationality, Yes.
In business, historically, there has been lifetime employment, so your fate really is linked to your company’s fate. A lot of your pay is in the form of bonuses and you only get the bonus in years when business has been good. There’s also a sense of pride and comfort in belonging to a good company. In status terms, I’ve heard it said that, “It’s better to be a janitor for Toyota than president of your own company”.
This has been changing though, as Japan Inc. has started to adopt ‘American’ business practices. To avoid hiring employees for life, there’s been a practice for a decade or so of hiring part-timers or ‘Freeters’ so that the companies don’t have to give benefits or permanent employment. In some ways, the culture has adapted, and the lone-wolf ronin (Samuri without a master)
has become an OK thing to be among the young.
I don’t think this bodes well, in the long run, for Japan, but they have other problems anyhow. Among them, is the fall of the marriage rate, and the fall of the population replacement rate (no kids!).
Japan as a country is sort of slowly going out of bisiness, as the population gets old.
@derm81:
No. Absolute bunk.
In most of Asia, the group is more important than the individual.
In Japan, sekentei, or reputation, is very strong. It is like a religion. Failure is bad for your sekentai, success enhances it. You want to be part of a group that is reputable. If your company makes a famous product, you get some of the fame. If your company fails, you share the shame. The old system of the lifelong employment with one company, which is your family, is broken. People get fired. Which is a shock, both economically as well as to ones reputation. Suicide after getting fired is high.
All of this has nothing to do with nationalistic pride or the lack of a military. That “glorified police force” has Aegis destroyers and Patriot missiles. It’s a formidable 200K force, an army in police clothing.
In most of Asia, the group is more important than the individual.
Wonder if that will be America’s downfall, at least in certain areas???
flashpoint:
In ’05, Japan spent 8.2% of GDP on health care, or $2908 per person.
In ’07, US spent 15.2% of GDP on health care, or $7439 per person.
US spends about double or more of what other developed countries spend (Europe, Japan).
The fact that the US blows a lot more on health care than does everyone else is no secret. As a percentage of GDP, we spend far more than everyone else. One example: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_exp_tot_of_gdp-health-expenditure-total-of-gdp
Yet despite the spending, we don’t get much bang for the buck. We should be getting results well above everyone else, when you consider how much money that we dump into that rathole, yet we don’t.
Americans seem to have some sort of pathological denial about how poorly our system performs. On a micro level, we have some great physicians and some of the world’s best schools, but on a macro level, many people are left behind and receive no or a deeply rationed form of care. We already have the sort of rationing that people allegedly fear. When people are dying for lack of treatment while so much money gets spent, that’s rationing in its worst form.
Yet despite the spending, we don’t get much bang for the buck. We should be getting results well above everyone else, when you consider how much money that we dump into that rathole, yet we don’t.
And yet Medicare and Medicaid also spend a lot more than national health care plans in other countries. Medicare spends similar amounts to private health care plans for the elderly. So regardless of how true your statement is, I have no reason to expect that a US national health system would be any different from Medicare in its spending.
Much of the extra US spending comes from a tendency to prescribe the latest medicines and use the latest technology. Much of the rest comes from engaging in heroic efforts either at the end of life or at the beginning (for premature babies), or for rare diseases. None of those things are particularly efficient in terms of bang for the buck, but neither do I expect that the political process would be able to restrain them, either. Indeed, the political realities in this country are much more likely to force hospitals to use the latest and greatest treatments and to force insurance companies to cover them.
A smattering of the rest comes from issues like higher rates of obesity and poor diet (and low birth weight infants) that are only tangentially related the what we consider the health system, and wouldn’t be affected by a national health care plan.
GREAT NEWS!!!!!
Somehow I wasn’t surprised after I read this blog. Toyota has been running obnoxious TV spots advertising great financing for 10+ years now, making them the only foreign manufacturer to ape Detroit’s sales and marketing tactics. Honda always kept it cool, FWIW.
I attribute this to much of Toyota’s growth in the USA. The quality was great, but then promotions, product overlap and brand corrosive decisions (BOF trucks and SUVs?) got them where they are today.
Still, this is Toyota we are talking about. I expect they will prune models (brands?), factories, etc faster than anyone else in the coming months. Well maybe not GM during CH11, but you get my point.
I may not know a lot about cars, but I do know a lot about warships, and I will say that any navy in the world, including the USN, which knows what it is doing, would not want to go up against the latest generation of JMSDF [Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force] AIP [Air-Independent Propulsion — gotta love it! Cars, the military, and computers, endless sources of acronyms and initialisms all] submarines, not in a month of Sundays.
Believe me, those boys are good!
Here’s an illustrative example of why health care costs radically more than anywhere in the world.
My wife takes a certain medication that costs $700 without insurance. Our copay used to be $60 before we went on self employed insurance. She has been taking it for four years. We asked whether there was a generic equivalent, but were told by the pharmacist there was none.
As a result of the change in insurance, our copays for medicine went through the roof. So I googled the medication to see if there was a generic.
As it turns out, the $700-a-month medication she was taking – the one that our pharmacist said there there couldn’t possibly be a generic for – is a time-release form of a generic drug that costs $10 – WITHOUT INSURANCE – for a three month supply. The only difference was that instead of taking the medication once a cay, she’d take the medication three times a day, with the same effect.
Again, my wife has been taking this medication for FOUR YEARS. Running the numbers:
Our copay ($60 * 48) = $2,880
Cost to the insurance company: ($700 * 48 – $2,880) = $31,320.
Total cost for four years: $33,600
Total cost for the supposedly non-existent generic for the same four years: $159.84
Does it take a nobel laureate in economics to comment on what’s wrong with that picture, or deduce why health care costs are so high? If there are 1,000 people taking that same medication with no knowledge of a generic, that’s tens of millions of dollars literally burned up. And insurance companies pay for it all, which drives up our premiums.
In the meantime, I switched pharmacies after a VERY nasty conversation with the pharmacy manager for shaking us down for four years. She assured me that she had no idea that there was another way of taking that medication that would have saved us and the insurance company all that money, and became rather annoyed when I told her that it was me who found the generic, after a whole four minutes on the Internet. At that point, her statements took on a distinct “my legal department says to tell you this and that” tone.
If I were you, I’d make a list of EVERY medication you take and look up the generic equivalent. Your pharmacist has NO motivation whatsoever to save you money.
@Flashpoint
Your powers of analysis are overcoming your argument. Even talking points, when seen together, should make sense.
The predilection for making opaque claims, that are badly researched and founded in irreality, is one of the reasons why the US car industry is in deep dodo. You rarely solve your own problems by complaining about something that is both unconnected and misperceived.
As to Toyota.
Toyota scaled for a more car hungry world – they now have excess capacity, and have a variety of long term contracts for parts and commodities entered into when the world was hungry.
It’s sucking into their bottom line.
While the media show headlines about “the banking crisis being over,” we haven’t even seen the beginning of the financial crisis about to strike business activity in general and households in toto.
And yes, the entire world has been happily shipping products to a US only too willing to finance credit with credit with credit.
It’s been an age of irresponsibility all around.
John –
You’re right about the Japanese Navy – vastly underrated.
Problem with AIP technology is that sooner or later, the sub HAS to come up. And when it does, it makes noise, regardless of the propulsion system.
The way to defeat them would be to drop a lot of active-sonar buoys, I’d think.
Here’s the deal in a nutshell.
Japan as you see it today was engineered by two American men: Douglas MacArthur and Edward Deming. And MacArthur was entirely engineered by his mother, who rented an apartment with a view of “Dugout Doug”‘s West Point room so she could verify that he was actually studying every night.
So, if you have any problems with Japan, talk to MacArthur’s mom. It’s her fault. Those panty-vending machines? Definitely her fault, although the streamlined system for getting panties directly from the naughty bits of putative schoolgirls to the hermetically sealed packages comes straight from the Deming playbook.
These Japanese submarines sound very kawaii but once the Chinese reduce the major islands to radioactive rubble, they won’t have anywhere to refuel, which somewhat limits their effectiveness.
Flicked through my copy of Ferguson’s “The Ascent of Money,” looking for a statistic I remembered, and which should be apposite here, particularly to those who would like to dial back on the advances achieved as countries grew rich due to the industrial revolution. Apples & Oranges comparisons don’t get you anywhere.
“The average North American colonist, it has been claimed, had a standard of living not significantly superior to that of the average Chinese peasant cultivator. Indeed, in many ways the Chinese civilization of the Ming era was more sophisticated than that of early Massachusetts … Yet, between 1700 and 1950 there was ‘a great divergence’ of living standards between East and West. While China may have suffered an absolute decline in per capita income in that period, the societies of the North West – in particular Britain and its colonial offshoots – experienced unprecedented growth thanks, in large part, to the impact of the industrial revolution. By 1820 per capita income in the United States was roughly twice that of China; by 1870, nearly five times higher; by 1913 nearly ten times; by 1950 nearly twenty-two times.
The average annual growth rate of per capita GDP in the Unites States was 1.57 per cent between 1820 and 1950. The equivalent figure for China was -0.24 per cent. In 1973, the average Chinese income was at best one twentieth of the average American … as recently as 2006, the ratio of US to Chinese per capita income (calculated in terms of international dollars at market exchange rates) was still 22.9:1.”
We’re now in the process of dialing back on what’s been achieved in the West, in a desperate attempt to remain competitive with emerging markets.
According to one researcher, we should look at what life was like in the industrialized West in the 1890-1920 period – ignoring WWI, for what kind of sustainable living level the planet can support, if everyone is going to have the same lifestyle. For billions of people around the world, this represents a great leap ahead, for which they are willing to work for less money than we spend on chewing gum per day.
Interesting times ahead, and people really should be trying to find common ground, instead of rallying around trite polemic.
The story of American health care is worse, far worse, than the story of Detroit.
Far more, far smarter, far more powerful people have vested interest in status quo, for healthcare.
It is killing the entire economy, far worse then Detroit could ever do.
We are the undisputed world leader is self poisonous healthcare system. Its pretty good at emergency intervention and at making new drugs, and not much else, while its killing the country’s economy with its stratospheric costs.
AND no fix I have seen suggested in last ten years will dial its costs down to world normal levels.
Flashpoint:
“So when will someone give me the cost per country for the healthcare of the workers in those auto companies I asked about?
Or should I hold my breath on that?”
Keep holding your breath, because your premise is false. You can’t compare US auto companies healthcare with any other workers, foreign or domestic, because US auto workers (UAW) have healthcare like no other. No premiums, no deductibles, no co-pays. That is because of the contracts they negiotiated for, struck for, and got mgt to cave in for.
Instead compare it to my insurance. I pay a monthly premium for family coverage to participate in a PPO. I have an out of pocket deductible and a copay of 20% until my yearly charges reach a certain amount. Then it’s no copay (100% paid for) up to 1 million a year. I I go to a doctor out of the network it’s still covered but for less, which means more out of my pocket.
If you want to compare that to the Jpanese I will be happy to give you the numbers.
Two comments about US health care: You can’t get the cost down as long as the lawyers are allowed to sue everyone and everything AND make the “deep” pockets of the insurance companies pay for those lawsuits (which they pass on to us).
And comparing obesity rates to Asian countries is silly. You’re talking about two different racial makeups. And while I believe that all races and genders have equal rights, I do not believe we are exactly the same. Asians have an advantage over whites, blacks, and Hispanics when it comes to body fat. Some is diet, some is cultural, some is genetics. You should also note that it is invariably the poor in this country that are obese because cheaper food is usually fattening food. Fast food is cheaper than Ruth Crist’s, but it will also make you fatter.
Much of the extra US spending comes from a tendency to prescribe the latest medicines and use the latest technology
No, most of it comes from spending money on bureaucracy. The US spends more money deciding who, when, how much and why someone should see care, as well as should pay for it and who is to blame, and where all the paper goes, then on simply providing carte-blanche care.
The example above of the “simple’ bill from Japanese is apropos. Where the US (and now Canada, the UK, and to a lesser degree France) are suffering is due to administrative creep. Once you start nickel-and-diming healthcare, you fatally undermine the premise of the system.
Ideologues like to pardon the US system on the grounds that it’s users are morally “weak”, but the problem isn’t the users, it’s the system. What is killing the US system (and the people who use it) is overhead costs, not the net costs of service.
You see this in industry, as well. We do business with GM and Toyota, and the amount of administrative bullshit that you have to wade through in order to deal with GM is astonishing. With Toyota, it’s much, much easier.
JohnHowardOxley:
“Believe me, those boys are good!”
One of the biggest factors in Japan’s defeat in WWII was the US unrestricted submarine campaign. Much like the U-boat campaign against Britain, the US destroyed Japan’s merchant marine fleet, crippling the supply of raw materials to their indrustry. Japan was very late to employ the tactics that the British and Americans used against the U-boats (convoy system, destroyer escorts, maritime patrol aircraft) until too late to make a difference.
They have learned from their past mistakes and have one of the most effective if not the most effective anti-submarine technologies anywhere. I would not want to go up against them, even in an American sub. During the cold war the Soviets would have been at an extreme disadvantage if hostilities had broken out.
As an anti socialized medicine guy, I will be happy to concede that the Japanese have cheaper healthcare costs overall.
I don’t agree that it follows they get a better deal. I also don’t believe that infant mortality rate is a good place to look to measure care. When I was living in Canada there was a small crisis because all the moms were mad that they could not get an OB to see them without an emergency (there was a shortage of OB’s, you can figure out why). The only prenatal care available for many was through midwifes if they could find one. Still, they had lower infant mortality than the US.
There are lots of inputs into outcomes that get warped when you compare countries. The best solution for the US is not socialization, it’s doing what works best in the US, actual market forces (not contrived ones).
Lastly, what’s good for Toyota is not necessarily good for Japan. A weak yen means they pay more for imports, and they import a good deal of things. Most of us would not be happy living in an average Japanese home.
What branches of medical care are still largely devoid of insurance plans (though that is changing)? Eye care and cosmetic surgery. What branches of medical care are not experiencing sky rocketing costs? Eye care and cosmetic surgery. For some procedures, the quality is actally rising with decreasing prices. Is this coincidental, or could it be that the lack of paying for something directly out of pocket resulted in abuse of the system (see the pharmaceutical post above as an example)? Psarhjinian touched on another force for driving up the costs under these circumstances as well as the common scapegoat, lawyers. While many factors may drive costs up, without the psychological drive of paying directly out of pocket for care to drive those costs down, they rise practically out of control.
You mean Toyota built their massive automotive empire on the backs of our good credit and not on the reputation of millions of Camrys and Corollas and careful long-term strategic planning?
Surely you jest.
I’m saving up for my next car, probably when my current car is 8 or 9 years old. I would like to pay 100% cash for the new one. Haven’t decided if I’ll buy new or used; probably used this time.
So hopefully for me there will be no need for any credit market.
P.S. What the hell kind of bridge is that in the pic? Holy yikes, I don’t think it’s at all ADA compliant!
ZoomZoom – exactly! exactly! exactly!
When I think of how much interest a person pays in a lifetime on debt of any kind…
We hope to be mortgage free in under 10 years and able to help our children be mortgage free when they buy their first homes so they can do the same for their children.
No economic downturn will take away my house and car!!!