EconomistJapan.com: Celebrate Neumann's &Japan's gifts to humanity since 1945, all Asia Rising 1960+MacraeFriends and Family
Future HistoryEntrepreneurialRevolution.city July 2020..If you care about two out of 3 lives mattering who are Asian, nearly 60 years of miracles mapping around worldwide decision-makers considering Japan from 1962 are worth replaying -that's when my father Norman Macrae aged 39 was privileged to write his first signed survey in The Economist -the first 2 quarters of dad's 80+ years of life had been spent
**writing unsigned leaders in The Economist (eg as only journalist at Messina's birth of EU) after serving as teenager in world war 2 navigating air places uk bomber command region modern day bangladesh/myanmar -

Asia Rising Surveys

in 60 years


Friday, March 20, 2020

macrae last regular survey at the economist - extract next ages of man dec 1988

The 65-year-old Norman Macrae retires this week as deputy editor of The Economist. He will still be writing for the paper, but ends nearly 40 years of what has hitherto been his main job being partly responsible for what other people write, inside The Economist's college of opinion. His last survey as deputy editor contains his personal guesses about the main changes ahead, in ways that will be controversial. The first article discusses where the rich countries have got to, without most of them recognising it
Within a hundred years, guessed Maynard Keynes in 1928, the standard of living in Western Europe and America "will be between four and eight times as high as it is today". Since nobody could sensibly wish to consume four or eight times as much as he did in 1928, people would come to recognise the pursuit of money for “what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease”. “For the first time since his creation”, enthused the Arts-Theatre-founding Keynes, “man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live agreeably and wisely and well”.
From his observation of the very rich, who already had four-to-eight times the normal person’s income in 1928, Keynes did not think man would be very good at this, and he went on to one of his homosexual-chauvinist diatribes that women in the well-to-do classes looked to him like being even worse.
Sixty years on, in 1988, the real GNPs of the United States, the EEC and Japan are between 31/2 and 18 times what they were in 1928, although with awkwardly more people to eat those GNPs up. The United States, like Britain, is a relative slowcoach. See chart.
United States 1928-1988
1988 as a multiple of 1928 level
Japan 1930 -1988
1988 as a multiple of 1930 level
West Germany 1928 -1988
1988 as a multiple of 1928 level
Britain 1928-1988
1988 as a multiple of 1928 level
America's real GNP in 1988 is six times its 1928 level, but its population has doubled. The average American’s real personal disposable income has multiplied 2.9 times since 1928, and his consump-tion has increased slightly more. There is no sign of bored affluent people deciding not to spend too heavily, as Keynes had expected. Instead, all the rich countries’ peoples are borrowing like crazy to make the purchases they could most easily postpone. Americans now buy annually over ten times as many consumer durables as they did in 1928.

Where Japan differed

However, as in Western Europe, the most voracious rise since 1928 is that real annual expenditure by America’s central government has multiplied more than 19 times over. One might therefore suppose there has been an especial rise in the satisfactions that are traditionally the aim of government: less fear that America’s sons might be killed in foreign wars, more effective crime prevention, greater social cohesion. Things have moved exactly the other way round.
In Japan the rise in real GNP has been over three times as huge as in America (having multiplied nearly 18 times since 1930), but central-government expenditure has gone much less (multiplied under six times). Despite this image as “an appallingly low public spender”, the satisfaction in things provided by government in Japan has gone up much more than in America or Europe.
The average Japanese has much less fear than in 1928 that her or his son might be killed in foreign wars. The poorest three-quarters of Japanese 17-year-olds are startlingly better educated than their equivalents in 1928 Japan or in 1988 America or Britain, at a lower taxpayers’ cost per head. Japan has moved from a high Asian infant-mortality rate into the lowest infant mortality ever attained by woman anywhere. It has carried through the first industrial revolution in world history during which crime rates initially went down. It does still have a sense of community and social cohesion (low rates of divorce, juvenile delinquency and drug abuse, the unvarying re-election of a rather boring conservative government all through the past 40 years). Although left-of-centre people will find this appalling, it is more than conceivable that Japan shows the way that successfully governed countries will go.
In Western Europe there has been one strange similarity to Japan, because the areas most knocked about during the 1939-45 war surged most quickly above their 1920s income levels during the 30 years immediately after it. But in Western Europe (and especially Britain) there has been a clear drop in the quality of life for one group: among the sort of European women who in 1928 were cosseted domestic servants not just the leisured ladies against whom Keynes railed, but most upper-middle-class mothers of small children. There has therefore been a drop in upper-middle-class small children.
In Europe the rise in standards has been fast lowest down, among the sorts of ordinary working Englishman or Frenchman who in 1928 owned only one pair of trousers. As in America, it has been fastest of all for working-class married women. It is therefore a pity that married women are virtually disappearing among the groups that have most need of a lot of them.

Saturday, March 14, 2020

from nhkworld- US President Donald Trump has nominated the head of a conservative think tank as new ambassador to Japan.
The White House announced the choice of Kenneth Weinstein on Friday. Weinstein is the President and CEO of Hudson Institute and believed to have expertise on foreign policy and security issues.
He has close ties with Japanese political figures and met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he visited Japan in July. He has also frequently met with senior Japanese officials and researchers visiting Washington.
A source who met Weinstein says the think tank CEO hopes to oversee close coordination between Japan and the US.
Hudson Institute is known among Washington think tanks for its close ties with the Trump administration. In July, it created the post of Japan Chair, served by H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser to Trump.
The post of ambassador to Japan has been vacant since July after Bill Hagerty resigned to run for Senator.
Weinstein will officially become ambassador after Senate approval.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

curriculum 4/50

the lancet with professors from asia pacific eg have recommended that the worlds number 1 missing curriculum of youth is peer to peer pre-adolescent and adolescent health - each year could mentor eg 2 years younger

both girls boys and mixed curricula could be developed

part of bracs model empowering women to build south asia tracked the progression of primary scholl children -in its 50000 schools which girls most wanted to be village health servants
secondary scholarships were one way to build generations of health workers

when bangladesh was the poorest nation in the world, many children did not go to secondary school- so another way forward was offering apprentceships when girl left school to the village para health workers

in todays money brac estimates that the initial training needed to ensure every village grassroots network linked para health microfranchises under 100$

community 3/50 restore youth community arts/fashions

youth create fashions
but tv sucked out participation and local fashion creation

ways to change this
alibaba village university trained 40000 youth to be local fashion idols
japan celebrates carnivals/rituals out of every locality- these can launch food recipes build community logos linkin sister city schools with shared curricula- eg what is your places most unique species or cultural celebration
whats the most beautiful photo of your place