#2-5 Ten years on [Sep 3rd 2011]

#2-5 Ten years on [Sep 3rd 2011]

Sep 11th, 2011 Shinjuku Paul Bassett

Members: Iino, Ono, Ogawa, Ido and Kurasawa

Articles we discussed:

[Leaders][Infrastructure project] The great train robbery

[Business][Doing business in Brazil] Rio or Sao Paulo?

[Business][Schumpeter] Angst for educated

[Britain][Food prices and mergers] Hard to swallow

    Ten years have passed since the tragic terrorist attack hit NY and six months since the disastrous earthquake hit the north east of Japan. We gathered in Shinjuku on this memorable day. Kurasawa, who is a friend of Iino came to join us for the first time. She is working for a cosmetic company and lives in Gotenba in which her company’s factory is located. She comes back to Tokyo every weekend so she can join us. We discussed on four articles and talked on our jobs. I am going to review our discussion briefly.

    The first article picked up by Iino was “The great train robbery” from Leaders section. This article focused mainly on Britain’s high-speed train project, which connects London and northern Britain in a few hours. This newspaper’s opinion is presented clearly on its topic sentence; ”High-speed rail lines rarely pay their way. Britain’s government should ditch its plan to build one.” They opposed to the project. We mainly discussed whether it is only the case of Britain or also applicable to any cases we have heard over the world. This topic was sensitive and interesting for us Japanese because Japan puts up infrastructure exportation as a growth strategy and a high-speed railway is one of the most valuable strategic assets.

    Secondly, we focused on Brazil. The article “Rio or Sao Paulo?” showed us that Rio de janeiro became to be attractive for business for the first time in decades comparing with a well known business city, Sao Paulo. I have been to Sao Paulo and met several Japanese Brazilian managers. They all have a positive outlook on their country so I remember I was impressed from their attitudes. Such brightness we mainly discussed about. It looks similar to the atmosphere of Japan in 1960’s. Ono said it comes from economic growth. This was simple and persuasive answer but we have to keep in mind that brightness cast shadow at the same time. We should look at not only bright side but also dark side of the country.

    Third article was close to us because we all are university graduates and working on “white color“ jobs for several years. The number of people who are educated is growing especially in developing countries. They compete with Europe’s or American educated people who are working at medical, legal and finance companies. The educated also suffer from IT development. Professional tasks easily can be replaced by software especially data processing tasks. This kind of topic is picked up several times on this newspaper. Our discussion made us to reconsider the values of our jobs.

    The last article picked up by Ido is about food prices and mergers in Britain. She is working at Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries so she is interested on this issue. This topic is related to the issue of competition and fairness in a market. Mergers make a monopoly and intervene fair competition among players. This article considers the reason of food price inflation in Britain. The main two possible causes are an oligopoly and imported inflation. We discussed right and wrong an oligopoly market and price controllers of the market.

    After the discussion we ate lunch at the restaurant on the top of the nearest building. The view from there was splendid and the place was comfortable to eat together. We talked about our daily life and work. What we enjoyed most was the talk of love affairs.