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May 02, 2024
 

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Robert J. Samuelson
For Robert J. Samuelson's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2014
Time to say goodbye to the business cycle?
The many failures of economics before, during and after the recent financial crisis have left an intellectual vacuum. It seems that governments' past success in stabilizing the economy in the short run encouraged too much debt and instability in the long term.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2014
Bewildering take on the American job market
With the U.S. government's latest monthly employment report, the American job market has entered a bewildering phase. The U.S. may be closer to 'full employment' than is commonly supposed, but the weak recovery since 2009 is hardly typical of economic cycles since World War II.
COMMENTARY / World
May 26, 2014
A memorial to horror and honor
More fitting than any commentary about Memorial Day, just celebrated in the U.S., is the description of Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox to Ulysses S. Grant, which ended the Civil War.
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014
Is China the top economic power?
New World Bank figures suggesting that China's GDP will overtake that of the U.S. sometime this year raise profound issues for Americans who have presumed that postwar economic affluence depends on countries becoming more like the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014
Biased media give customers what they want
A study by two University of Chicago economists disputes the conventional wisdom that publishers impose their views on newsrooms. What actually happens is both more innocent and more insidious.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 20, 2014
Double tragedy of long-term unemployment
To be among America's long-term unemployed — workers who have been jobless at least six months — is especially demoralizing for midcareer professionals and managers in their 40s and up because, from the perspective of potential employers, not hiring these workers can make sense.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2014
Obama gambles by slashing defense spending
The Obama administration's 2015 military budget cuts may embolden potential adversaries and abet miscalculation.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2014
Wrong debate on economic inequality in U.S.
The theory that growing inequality in the 2000s caused many low- and middle-income Americans to over-borrow so that they could keep up with wealthier Americans doesn't hold up. The right debate is on why lenders relaxed credit standards.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2014
Welfare state taking over the U.S. government
The budget story that is largely missed by American political leaders and the public is that the welfare state is strangling government's ability to respond to other national problems, because the constituencies for welfare benefits are more powerful than their competitors for federal support.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2014
Myths about economic inequality
True, the gap between the rich and the poor is enormous, wider than most Americans would wish, but this reality has made economic inequality a misleading intellectual fad, blamed for many of our problems.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2014
Benjamin Bernanke's triumph — and defeat
In the initial days of the 2008-09 financial crisis, Ben Bernanke, the outgoing U.S. Federal Reserce chairm, mobilized the Fed as the lender of last resort and, arguably, averted a second Great Depression. His efforts to kick-start the economy by keeping short-term interest rates low and by massive bond-buying were less successful.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 31, 2013
Like other U.S. cities, Detroit must reinvent itself
If nothing else, Detroit's bankruptcy marks the symbolic closure of an era when heavy industry dominated the American economy and the U.S. dominated the world.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2013
Is the age of automation taking a toll on jobs?
American colleges aren't worse today, but the skills required for solving unstructured problems and working with new info have become more complex.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2013
High tech and the road to 'full employment'
The U.S. may not regain 'full employment' anytime soon. Companies didn't just fire workers during the Great Recession; they went on a hiring strike.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2013
IMF's global forecast makes for dreary reading
The International Monetary Fund's latest global economic forecast makes for unhappy reading. You may remember that, some years back, it was fashionable to ask whether the world economy could continue "flying on one engine" — meaning the United States. America's boom and import appetite boosted other economies. After the U.S. crash in 2008, the role of global engine shifted to the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and other "emerging market" nations. Their strong growth offset some weakness in America, Europe and Japan. The new world helped rescue the old.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013
Beware the Internet and the danger of cyberattacks
Economics columnist Robert J. Samuelson has had it with the Internet. He says its astonishing capability to access information is not worth the dangers from cyberwar.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2013
'Privileged' dollar a cause of lopsided growth
For years, the dollar's role as the major global currency has been described as an 'exorbitant privilege.' Now it may be turning into an extravagant curse.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2013
The up- and downside for the biggest economy
'Is America in decline?' may be the wrong question, as most of the affluent world — including U.S., Europe and Japan — faces similar threats.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2013
Address shows Obama is playing make-believe
There was a make-believe quality to U.S. President Barack Obama's second inaugural address, as if all that's required to solve serious problems are the intelligence to produce proper policies and the political grit to get them approved. Perish the thought that there are deep conflicts among the things that Americans want, or the possibility that some problems lack easy, obvious and inexpensive remedies. This isn't the vision Obama was peddling.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2013
Obama's quest for greatness
Barack Obama's quest to achieve presidential 'greatness' will probably be denied because none of America's problems rises to the level of mortal peril.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Did Japan intervene to prop up the yen? Analysts think it did.
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the exchange rate for the yen against the U.S. dollar (right) in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

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