How to waste tax-payers’ money 101

Posted by sheffner

March 8, 2012

As of March 2009, Japan‘s population is 127,076,183,

The Japanese government hires one million people. Compare this to the 1.7 million hired by the US government, to govern a population thrice as large as Japan’s. I don’t advocate kicking people out of jobs, but there are clearly inefficiencies that must be eliminated.

…

[Japan] bought 179 F-35s when they’ve only built 63 (ever) [i.e. when only 63 have been built - by the U.S., that is, Japan doesn't build them] and cost hundreds of millions of dollars per aircraft.

quantitative easing (if, like Pooh and me, you did know what QE is but have forgotten, these articles are helpful: “Does QE work? Ask Japan” and Wikipedia’s “Quantitative Easing: In Japan“)

subsidies for electric cars (for why this might not be a good idea, Google “Broken Window Fallacy“, or, like the author of Save Japan, read Hazlitt’s classic “Economics in One Lesson“; free PDF download available from Mises.org)

via [Weekend Countdown]: 8 Reasons Why Japan Should Not Increase its Consumption Tax « Saving Japan.

Nederlands: Voorkant van het boek Economics in...

Image via Wikipedia

Hamish McRae: We can’t carry on living off all this free money from QE (independent.co.uk)
Japan Looks Beyond Its Borders for Investors (nytimes.com)
Japan’s misleading recovery (theglobeandmail.com)
Is Japan next? (finance.fortune.cnn.com)
Japan’s Demographic Doom (ibtimes.com)

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