We are now studying Total Quality Management ala Dr. Deming. As you can read, it is the story of the rise of the entire Japanese post WW II economy. Well, still, the business cycle has not been repealed.
Japan backslides, losing economic powerhouse status. This article details how Japan now ranks 20th in GDP per capita. Its share of the world economy peaked in 1994 at 18%, today it is less than 10%.
People there are however ‘rich, happy, safe, and clean.’ And they have money in the bank. However the population demographics mean that by 2050 population and economic growth will be zero.
Yet in the 1980s a you will read (in my handout) we produced a tv show entitled If Japan can, why can’t we? The big story here is that the business cycle is never repealed. This creative destruction concept, that jobs have to be destroyed to pave the way for new technologies, also applies to the nation’s economic cycle. The hard working, okay they still work hard, Japanese work ethic is now just that much harder in Malaysia or India or China.
Think world history for a bit. Egypt, Greece, Rome, math and science move to the Islamic and Indian culture during the Middle Ages, then the Renaissance, Italy again, Spain/Portugal, Holland, France, England, the USA, the rise of Japan Inc and now the rest of Asia. These days the world waits for no one. The shift in power has been accelerated at a pace the Egyptians could not and still do not grasp.
The Unions are still beating up on Wal Mart. Hillary used to sit on their board and now decries them as a company. Yet as we write WMT is fading from the perch it once held. It has grown large enough to be its own competition, lawsuits and scandals plague it reputation, and many areas shun its very existence. As Tom Sowell noted a few years back, the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company A & P used to dominate grocery stores, no more, why would WMT be any different?
As usual Dr. Sowell was right.
Professor Elam 
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