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...barriers to competition. It's no secret that the root of all of these problems is demographics. An aging population is shrinking Japan's labor force and consumer market. The country's working-age population (aged 15 and over) has declined 2% since 1999. Over the same period, the number of workers aged 65 and up expanded 19%, while the labor force of workers aged 25 to 34 shrank 9%. (Read "Japan: Stimulating the World Markets...
...tough, they tend to save more than they would otherwise. Even workers eligible to receive government benefits cannot rely on the public pension system for adequate retirement funding. In short, this thin social safety net perpetuates the population decline and prevents private consumption from rising to offset the shrinking number of consumers. You can't expect the population and the economy to grow by guaranteeing survival to only the oldest workers and businesses while subjecting everyone else to market forces...
...curious, the number of people who bemoan Hong Kong's independent-music scene. Critics (and expats in town for brief, superficial sojourns) adopt a default posture of digit-pointing, waving jaded index fingers at a concert calendar crammed with Cantopop and mainstream international acts. But even the most cursory probing reveals plenty of homegrown edge. Consider the Underground, a fortnightly indie-music night that takes place in venues across town, whose organizers have showcased more than 300 bands in its five years of existence. That's irrefutable evidence that if you're looking to tap into live, original music...
...system has made reform nearly impossible and is now "sclerotic," according to Julien Bayou, 29, one of the half-dozen or so people at the core of France's new protest movement. "Thirteen percent of people in France live in poverty, youth unemployment is above 25%, and the number of people who can't keep up with the price of rent and food continues to rise. We're caught in the middle of all that, so we had to find a more efficient way to deal with it than the usual method of marching with sad faces in the rain...
...time members running each. Every group comes up with creative and often wickedly funny new ways to focus attention to their issue, drawing in supporters and hordes of journalists who don't want to miss a good story. It has proved wildly successful. "What you have is a small number of brilliant people taking up problems that may seem marginal compared to the broader socio-economic debates going on, but which it turns out a lot of people are very concerned with," explains Guy Groux, a specialist in French social and labor conflict for the National Center for Scientific Research...