Japanese Women Armed With Chainsaws…

Source: Wikimedia.

Dear Diary,

Our hat is off. Our knees are bent. Our mouth hangs open.

We are amazed. Grateful. And appalled.

What will the Japanese do next, we wonder?

We are amazed because we have seen the international test results. On IQ tests, the Japanese score 10 points higher than the world average. And yet there they are… doing the stupidest things we can imagine.

We are grateful, because Japan has been leading the world in economic absurdity – bubbles in stocks and real estate… bailouts… ZIRP… and QE.

And there is no economic policy so ridiculous that US policymakers won’t give it a whirl. Whither thou goest, O, Nippon, we’re right behind you.

Abe, You’ve Got to Be Kidding

Finally, we are appalled…

What kind of a moron would believe government employees should decide what industries are successful?

How would they know, for example, better than people in the forestry business that timber would pay off?

And why does anyone think that encouraging young women to go out into the woods and do hard, dangerous work will be good for the economy?

It may be fun to watch… and it may be fun for girls who want fresh air and boys who want female company… but as a serious economic policy? Abe, you’ve got to be kidding.

But this is always the problem with world improvers: They are deadly serious. Bloomberg is on the story:

 

 

Japanese Women Armed With Chainsaws Head to the Hills Under Abe’s Plan

Junko Otsuka quit her job in Tokyo and headed for the woods, swapping a computer for a bush cutter and her air-conditioned office for the side of a mountain. She was part of a new wave of women taking forestry jobs, the result of economic, social and environmental policies sprouting in Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s Japan.

Otsuka, a 30-year-old graduate from University of Tokyo, said she’s fine with the 20% pay cut to be the first female logger at Tokyo Chainsaws, a lumber company. The Sugi and Hinoki trees she harvests – cedars and cypresses in Japan – are used to build local homes under the government’s program to encourage the use of domestic wood.

“When I studied forestry at university, I learned that trees on Japanese mountains, ripe for harvest decades after planting, were left untouched as nobody wanted to do the job,” Otsuka said in an interview during a break from her work on a 95 degree-Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) day on the side of Mount Mitake, about 40 miles from the center of Tokyo. “I am in the place where I should be.”

Less than 70% of Japanese women between 25 years and 54 years old have jobs, the lowest rate among the world’s richest countries, according to estimates by Japan’s Cabinet Office. The nation’s workforce may swell by more than seven million people and gross domestic product could jump by as much as 13% if participation by women equaled that of men, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report May 6.