#2-6 The quest for jobs [Sep 10th 2011]

#2-6 The quest for jobs [Sep 10th 2011]

Sep 18, 2011 10:00-12:00 Gaienmae Dean & Deluca Aoyama

Members: Ogawa, Ono, Tomozawa, Kurasawa, Saito and Goto

Article we discussed:

[Leaders] The quest for jobs

[Special report] The great mismatch

[Leaders] The new special relationship

[Middle East and Africa][Israel and Turkey] Can it get worse?

    A special guest came to join this week. Mr. Goto, who is elder than us, found our website weeks before and contacted us to join our group. He already read the newspaper for several years so he knew much about its style and opinion. He has joined another economist readers’ group held in Gotanda several times so he advised us about the management of our group comparing characteristics of the two groups. His advice was so helpful so we are going to improve our discussion based on his advice.

    We have a fewer articles this week so we could discuss each topic taking much time. But sometimes our discussion got lost because each of us spoke what we wanted. We should be aware what we are discussing now and a facilitator should control the discussion to find the way to our conclusion.

    The first topic we discussed about was joblessness of the West. The Economist on this week had a special report about the topic. Our discussion was based on two articles, one from Leaders and another from special report. “The quest for job” from Leaders makes several proposals that politicians should do for reducing high unemployment levels of the West. The immediately priority should be supporting demand. To strike a bargain with the bond market in medium term and to stimulate the economy in various ways in short term are what they are expected. The Economist also insists demand side policies are also important. It suggests that labor market policies themselves can make huge difference because the new technology and globalization change demand for skills. A focal point of our discussion was an evaluation of Obama’s “Green New Deal” as a demand stimulus policy.

    The next article, “The great mismatch” explains about high unemployment rate focusing on a key word, “a natural rate of unemployment”. The rate stays on a high level compared to a decade ago because of globalization and the new technology. Saito made his discussion paper for the first time and he putted several referendums on his paper. It was helpful for the discussion. We had better follow his example.

    As an impressive cover picture of a tiger and a bulldog facing each other shows, the second topic we discussed was about emerging-market firms and Britain. Around 4 centuries ago, British capital went to the East but now capital is flowing the other direction. Britain is attractive for firms in emerging countries for four reasons; relatively open economy, expertise, brand and easy access to the city of London. We mainly discussed the case of Japan. Japan is relatively closed economy for immigrant workers and foreign capital. But attractiveness of Japan is similar to Britain especially expertise and brand. An interesting episode Kurasawa showed us is that “Made in Japan” is valuable in cosmetics industry because it guarantees qualities of products. For such reason, they gather materials from over the world and produce cosmetics in Japan. This episode is a unique hint for the future industry of Japan.

    Lastly Tomozawa picked up Israel and Turkey issues. He said he paid attention to Turkey because of its geopolitical importance. We didn’t know relations between Israel and Turkey have worsened or even didn’t imagine there have been relations between the two countries. So his choice was impressive for us. W discussed mainly the geopolitical and economical position of Turkey. Turkey is located in the Middle East of Asia but also on the edge of Europe being close to Russia. Securities of this region do not only related to this region but also effect over the world broadly. The existence of NATO get the relations more complicated. 

    At the end of the discussion, we shared ideas to improve our discussion. First, we should read a lot. The quality of output comes from the quantity of input. Second, put discussion topic first. We already read the articles before gathering, so we should more focus on a discussion itself than summarizing it. Thirdly, we had better state why do we pick up the articles. This was a hot sunny day and there was a festival in Gaienmae. From the next day the climate changed to dramatically cool. So the day was the last day of this summer.