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I've read articles before about how hard calrose rice gets pushed in Japan and how hard Japan pushes back. Article after article about how it just isn't right for the Japanese palette and that's why they tariff the poo poo out of it to make sure no one buys it. Hm...I feel like there's some disconnect in logic there...can't put my finger on it though.
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Mar 15, 2013 07:12
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Samurai Sanders posted:I've read articles before about how hard calrose rice gets pushed in Japan and how hard Japan pushes back. Article after article about how it just isn't right for the Japanese palette and that's why they tariff the poo poo out of it to make sure no one buys it. The logical disconnect is that if it isn't right for the "Japanese palette", tariffs aren't needed to make sure no one/very few people buy it.
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Mar 15, 2013 07:14
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The only people that benefit from this protectionist agricultural policy are olds out in the boonies. Which is why it won't change  NewtGoongrich posted:The logical disconnect is that if it isn't right for the "Japanese palette", tariffs aren't needed to make sure no one/very few people buy it. *WHOOSH*
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Mar 15, 2013 07:51
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NewtGoongrich posted:"Rice is the national staple" seems like a great reason not to impose a 778% tariff on rice imports. Rice in Asia recently going through a ridiculous supply shock due to speculation, and not an actual lack of supply, seems like a great reason to keep tariffs on rice in order to protect the self-sufficiency of a nation that already relies on imports more than it probably should. For as much talk about how Japanese people won't ever stand for anything but Japanese rice, in practice they know that people respond to cheap prices. Thus, they keep the tariffs in place to prevent the hollowing out of their domestic food supply. Mr. Fix It posted:The only people that benefit from this protectionist agricultural policy are olds out in the boonies. Which is why it won't change People benefit from this policy, and so therefore we should do away with it? Yeah, gently caress those old rural people that feed the country, right? ErIog fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 08:33
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How much more does rice generally cost in Japan compared to other places at the supermarket?
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Mar 15, 2013 08:39
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Some of my students can't wait to try Basmati rice. I've been hyping it up loads.
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Mar 15, 2013 08:42
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ErIog posted:People benefit from this policy, and so therefore we should do away with it? Yeah, gently caress those old rural people that feed the country, right? Well if all the olds actually died Japan might see some positive change! But no, they keep living and living and... living. All because of their wonderrice.
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Mar 15, 2013 08:42
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When the US said lay all your cards on the table, they didn't mean those funny nintendo trick cards! 
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Mar 15, 2013 08:57
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Bloodnose posted:How much more does rice generally cost in Japan compared to other places at the supermarket? It's enormously expensive and people grumble about the cost since it's been steadily rising since I've been here, but they'll buy it because white rice is considered the main dish in every single Japanese meal that has it. Everything else is considered a side.
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Mar 15, 2013 09:08
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ErIog posted:Rice in Asia recently going through a ridiculous supply shock due to speculation, and not an actual lack of supply, seems like a great reason to keep tariffs on rice in order to protect the self-sufficiency of a nation that already relies on imports more than it probably should. For as much talk about how Japanese people won't ever stand for anything but Japanese rice, in practice they know that people respond to cheap prices. Thus, they keep the tariffs in place to prevent the hollowing out of their domestic food supply.
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Mar 15, 2013 09:10
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No discussion of worldwide rice policy/price/supply is complete without mentioning the world's number one rice exporter for decades having just this year enacted a stupid loving price fixing policy internally that has pitched prices upward internationally and created massive deficits on the country's books. That's Thailand, of course, who only this year has been surpassed in exports for the first time.
ReindeerF fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 09:19
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ErIog posted:Rice in Asia recently going through a ridiculous supply shock due to speculation, and not an actual lack of supply, seems like a great reason to keep tariffs on rice in order to protect the self-sufficiency of a nation that already relies on imports more than it probably should. For as much talk about how Japanese people won't ever stand for anything but Japanese rice, in practice they know that people respond to cheap prices. Thus, they keep the tariffs in place to prevent the hollowing out of their domestic food supply. Talk about "self sufficiency" always seems ridiculous to me in reference to a country that imports virutally all of its energy supplies (Appearantly 96% not counting nuclear, 82% with nuclear). What sort of situation are people envisioning? When does this become relevant? I don't think we're actually going to see total war in any of our lifetimes. I feel like "domestic food supply" is only something that matters to military planners and the agricultural lobby. If we're going to talk rural old people we should also compare them with urban old people and other precarious people whose standard of living has to be impacted by the ridiculously inflated cost of staple foods. And, I'm by no means an economist and I honestly don't know if this is true, but I'd think logically that restricting imports creates a risk of supply shocks from natural disaster (flooding, drought, disease). You're really putting all your eggs in one basket. I'm really hoping that TPP can prove a big enough carrot to destroy a bunch of agricultural tarrifs and subsidies, and not just in Japan. It just seems so wasteful to pour money into the countryside that could be so much better spent elsewhere. Might as well employ the farmers to burn the money for all the economic good subsidies seem to do. Gleri fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 09:51
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Japan's cabinet has approved the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction, paving the way for legislation to enforce it. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1260157/1/.html quote:TOKYO: Japan moved one step closer to adopting a long-delayed treaty on child abductions on Friday when the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave its approval, a government spokesman said.
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Mar 15, 2013 10:03
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Food security is such a loving weak excuse for the tariffs. If it really was a major issue that needed to be dealt with then uncle taro and his 1 acre farm has to go so they can tear up all that poo poo and build mega farms capable of actually producing substantial amounts of food stuffs for the population. Not this turn of the century agrarian bullshit run by the loving JA of tons of little farms. I can't find the article but there was one I read about this farming town where there were more people working at the JA office in the town than there were farmers.
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Mar 15, 2013 10:10
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Vegetable posted:Japan's cabinet has approved the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction, paving the way for legislation to enforce it. It's not going to matter unless they change the terminology used in the legislation and also retrain judges so that verbal arguments aren't included as domestic violence. The last version they tabled was so full of loopholes that they might as well have just dropped their pants and mooned the international community. Relevant article in the JT here. Edit: Here's another one. Note that it's written by Amy Savoie though and has quite a slant to it. Sheep fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 10:17
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Do they have any actual motivation to really change this situation or are they comfortable just saying gently caress you to the West forever?
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Mar 15, 2013 10:19
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It's possible their actual plan for the population decline is to just steal babies.
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Mar 15, 2013 10:25
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The self sufficiency argument doesn't hold water, mainly because there simply isn't enough arable land to meet the caloric needs of the country at its current level of population. The food self sufficiency rating has hovered around 40% for the last 20 years or so, according to MAFF statistics. For comparison, the UK is around 70%. Remember that we're talking about a country of 120 million+ packed into an area roughly the size of California, with a large portion of it mountainous or occupied by conurbation. Reclaiming land is an expensive boondoggle that can cause immense environmental damage and disrupt a wide variety of marine-based industries such as fishing and seaweed harvesting (see the Isahaya Bay Reclamation Project and its effects on the Ariake Sea). That's not to say that domestic agriculture should be abandoned, since that would just make the country even more vulnerable to international price shocks and shortages. However, the simple reality of the circumstances is that no matter how you massage the numbers, Japan is still going to be dependent on imports for a significant amount of their food supply.
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Mar 15, 2013 10:37
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Sheep posted:Edit: Here's another one. Note that it's written by Amy Savoie though and has quite a slant to it. The last person who should be opening their yap about child abduction is Amy loving Savoie. Sheesh. poo poo like that is why I deleted JT from my bookmarks on Dec. 31. They need to go away and open the market for a real newspaper. edit: or just go away
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Mar 15, 2013 12:09
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Tariffs are almost always bad unless the other country is engaging in dumping (i.e., selling their stuff for less than the price it costs to make it just so they can eliminate your firms and then enact their own monopoly) It is ridiculous how much Japanese rice costs. Sorry, but a policy which helps out 1% of the population at the cost of the other 99% isn't worth it. I saw a chart once about how much each job "saved" by tariffs cost-- for Japan the figure was well over $1 million dollars per farmer job. I am all about government helping out the poor, and social programs, but this just isn't the way to do it. All of that money wasted on paying Japanese farmers could instead be used for childcare to let more women enter the workforce, healthcare costs for an aging population, etc. But instead it's propping up a handful of farmers because they are the only ones that bothered to vote. Japan needs to either get into luxury, ~special Japanese Rice~ which some people will pay astronomical costs for or completely get out of the rice business... TL'DR: Tariffs suck
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Mar 15, 2013 13:33
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Madd0g11 posted:Food security is such a loving weak excuse for the tariffs. If it really was a major issue that needed to be dealt with then uncle taro and his 1 acre farm has to go so they can tear up all that poo poo and build mega farms capable of actually producing substantial amounts of food stuffs for the population. Not this turn of the century agrarian bullshit run by the loving JA of tons of little farms. I can't find the article but there was one I read about this farming town where there were more people working at the JA office in the town than there were farmers. Farmers were considered next in the pecking order after samurai.
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Mar 15, 2013 14:20
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Stringent posted:Farmers were considered next in the pecking order after samurai.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:03
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Samurai Sanders posted:I think it actually went samurai > artisans > farmers. IIRC, the pecking order was traditionally samurai > farmers > artisans > merchants.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:46
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Or just call it by its name, 士農工商 (shinōkōshō).
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Mar 15, 2013 22:54
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NewtGoongrich posted:IIRC, the pecking order was traditionally samurai > farmers > artisans > merchants. IT Dudes > samurai > farmers > artisans > merchants. I fixed it for me. But it's a huge problem when 1% of the olds, the oldest olds. Are backseat driving the government because they grow rice.
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Mar 16, 2013 22:58
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NewtGoongrich posted:IIRC, the pecking order was traditionally samurai > farmers > artisans > merchants. Everything I've ever read said it was samurai with their own set of laws that applied to them then farmers/artisans/merchants held up to a separate legal system.
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Mar 16, 2013 23:35
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pentyne posted:Everything I've ever read said it was samurai with their own set of laws that applied to them then farmers/artisans/merchants held up to a separate legal system. In a lot of ways, yeah. In the Edo period, if you were a member of one the lower classes and offended or angered someone in the warrior class, they had the legal right to kill you on the spot. In practice it wasn't so simple though--the country was parceled up into fiefdoms and in practical terms a lot of those double-standard laws only applied when you were in your home fief. If you went into another lord's domain and started messing with his farmers or merchants or whatever you'd get yourself in really hot water.
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Mar 17, 2013 01:43
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I just want to thank you guys for the current conversation because I went to a pub quiz last night and there was a question about exactly this topic-- namely, to put the four classes in their appropriate hierarchy. 12 hours earlier I would've been totally clueless but I got the answer right and a lot of "wtf" stares from my teammates for knowing the answer immediately.
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Mar 17, 2013 12:46
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.........
Rekinom fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Mar 18, 2013 10:45
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The food at the commissary has no markup on transport cost though. The transport cost is sucked up by the American tax payer to give the military personnel a 'taste of home away from home.' I don't know much about how the commissary stocks food, if they bring it on commercial planes or on palletes in the back of a C130. I also suspect food suppliers give the military good deals that no other place can hope to get. Cutting tariffs would bring the prices down, but it'd never match anything at the commissary, even in the states, Wal-Mart still can't compete with prices at the commissary. ============= EDIT: Forgot to post this yesterday. Abe pledges to increase Japan's deterrence Abe's doing exactly what I figured; Priming everyone to accept huge budget bumps in defense spending. Kenishi fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 11:16
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I don't have any numbers, but having been born in Newport, RI, home of the Naval War College, I know that the tendency is for government contractors to soak the military for all they can. The point remains that commissary prices are heavily subsidized in much the same way that housing prices are for servicemen and women, for the same reason. It's hard enough keeping people in for multiple tours of duty as it is, so you don't want to have people getting pissed off about not being able to afford a decent steak or a reasonably sized apartment.
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Mar 18, 2013 12:50
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So grocery prices for soldiers are subsidised therefore Japan's protectionist tariffs are a-ok. Gj japan thread, stay crazy!
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Mar 18, 2013 13:38
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You can cut the tariffs, but I'm pretty sure that you'll still be paying for it somewhere else. Small farmers can't really compete against corporate farmers so you'll end up with a lot of people losing income, and some 50 yr old farmer isn't going to be retooling themselves for a new job market. I'd be curious to know what fraction of those are retirees using their crops to supplement their pensions. If its a large chunk, you'd probably just have the govt. paying recompense for lost income. Japan may not be far from 3rd world in some respects, but the country is still 1st world enough to not accept letting mass numbers of old people die of starvation on the streets. At least in that respect, people tend to be a bit more morally responsible than most libertarians wish the world was. Japan isn't going to be cutting tariffs on rice though, but I suspect they'll get into the TPP just fine.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:12
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Guess you missed the part where protectionism costs over $1 million USD per farmer job retained. They could just pay farmers to NOT farm and it would be more economically efficient.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:18
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hitension posted:Guess you missed the part where protectionism costs over $1 million USD per farmer job retained. They could just pay farmers to NOT farm and it would be more economically efficient.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:22
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ReindeerF posted:As America has shown, this can have unintended consequences. This actually gets misunderstood. The paying not to farm thing was a result of the Dust Bowl. Overfarming fucks up everything, as the Dust Bowl quite dramatically showed, but it's hard to ask farmers to just not grow anything since that means they have no income. So, the paying people not to farm concept was created to support farmers while their land was laying fallow, in order to prevent another Dust Bowl. Unless I'm wrong, but this is my understanding of it. The big farming corporations abuse it since they don't need to farm all the time, but then you're telling a company not to make as much profit as they could be and corporations are all assholes, so.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:25
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hitension posted:Guess you missed the part where protectionism costs over $1 million USD per farmer job retained. They could just pay farmers to NOT farm and it would be more economically efficient. I don't follow. Imposing tariffs doesn't cost money. Unless you are trying to say that the difference in money saved from "letting the market set the price" is the money 'spent.' I really don't care one way or the other. What I do know is I live in rural Japan and see the reality of the situation. More than half the land out here is farm land and most of the populace working the land is people well over 40. If even half of these people are relying on selling their crops for income, then the removal of tariffs will probably put most in dire straits. One question I still have is if the federal government removes tariffs, can prefectures just go back later and pass prefecture-level laws to reinstate tariffs on the prefecture level on imported goods?
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Mar 18, 2013 16:18
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Kenishi posted:I don't follow. Imposing tariffs doesn't cost money. Unless you are trying to say that the difference in money saved from "letting the market set the price" is the money 'spent.' It's simple: the Japanese are wasting money on food in a misguided, inefficient, market distorting exercise in de facto welfare by protecting inefficient farming. Buy up all the loving olds' farm land, put them to work nursing the super-olds, and sell the land to farming conglomerates that can actually turn a profit without ridiculous protections. Hell, I don't care if they require it to stay farm land instead of redeveloping. And the prefectures have zero independence: Japan is a unitary state.
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Mar 18, 2013 16:57
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Stringent posted:So grocery prices for soldiers are subsidised therefore Japan's protectionist tariffs are a-ok. Gj japan thread, stay crazy! I'm not sure who you're replying to with this. Me and Kenishi were both commenting on why PX prices are so low. Neither of us were tying it to a supporting argument for protectionist tariffs.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:07
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Kenishi posted:You can cut the tariffs, but I'm pretty sure that you'll still be paying for it somewhere else. Small farmers can't really compete against corporate farmers so you'll end up with a lot of people losing income, and some 50 yr old farmer isn't going to be retooling themselves for a new job market. I'd be curious to know what fraction of those are retirees using their crops to supplement their pensions. If its a large chunk, you'd probably just have the govt. paying recompense for lost income. Japan may not be far from 3rd world in some respects, but the country is still 1st world enough to not accept letting mass numbers of old people die of starvation on the streets. At least in that respect, people tend to be a bit more morally responsible than most libertarians wish the world was. I read a report a few months ago that showed that most of these small farmers actually lose money due to property taxes on the land, equipment upkeep (lots of them tend to have tractors and what not for their tiny plots), and so on. If not for subsidies and artificially high prices on rice they'd be losing money hand over fist, which is really about the only decent argument I've seen for keeping the rice tariffs and government controls in place. As you suspect, though, a large number of small farmers are retirees with a tiny plot next to their house farming rice in their spare time. Mr. Fix It posted:Buy up all the loving olds' farm land, put them to work nursing the super-olds That's actually a good idea. They could also cut property taxes on small farm plots if they wanted to keep farming viable for retirees, but that will never happen. Edit: agricultural land is already taxed less residential land to begin with, though I'm not sure exactly to what degree. Sheep fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 22:58
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