The "Problem" with Japan

   Whenever I hear politicians and commentators fret over Japan’s low birth rate and its implications for the viability of the pension system, I can’t help but ask the hell the country’s “leaders” have been doing for the past thirty years. When the pension system was set up, Japan still had a relatively young population where each retiree was supported by half a dozen or so workers paying into the pension scheme. As Japan developed and become wealthier, however, life expectancies were extended and the birthrate fell. In the mid ‘70s, the fertility rate fell below 2.0 for the first time, and the time implosion bomb started ticking. Although they knew the greying of Japan was going to become a major issue in the not so distant future, politicians—and I put most of the blame on the Liberal Democrats (LDP), today’s opposition party—did nothing to address it, letting the problem fester and worsen.

   At the wedding of my sister-in-law a decade ago a number of LDP bigwigs attended as the groom’s father had once been a Diet member back during the LDP’s heyday and was still active in local politics.

   Japanese wedding receptions are usually kicked off with a number of dull speeches given by bosses and other friends of the couple before the drinking begins, but at this particular reception a local politician made a long-winded speech in which he said, “We have put in place a number of policies such as the fūfu bessei (夫婦別姓), allowing you women to keep your maiden names after marriage, so what’s stopping you? Get married and have lots of children!”

   As if an attachment to one’s maiden name was the root of the issue. Feckin' eejit.

   If the politicians really want to address the issue they’ll need to do a number of things:

   One, support women who have more children by

      ◉ getting the economy back on its feet. There’s nothing like economic uncertainty to prevent a family from having a second or third child.

Triumph's "Dwindling Birth Rate Countermeasure" brassiere (少子化対策ブラ). Don't know about you, but it works for me!      ◉ improving the access to affordable daycare for working mothers. Daycare for anyone but the coddled civil servants and public employees who can enroll their children into publicly run day-care institutions more easily than others tends to be rather expensive. It can cost as much as ¥60-80,000 per month, or a quarter to half of a working mother’s salary.

      ◉ giving long-term financial support to families with young children, such as free healthcare, larger tax credits for those with children, grants for education, and so on. France did this, and has the highest birth rate among EU nations (save randy Ireland). It took twenty years, however, of continued support to get that birthrate up.

      ◉ encouraging Okamoto and other prophylactic makers to produce defective condoms that leak or tear easily, thereby increasing the number of unplanned pregnancies. In the event that these companies refuse to cooperate, then government officials should be armed with fine needles and discharged to neighborhood convenience stores where they will tamper with the condoms.

      ◉ encouraging immigration, yes, immigration. Real, long-term, permanent immigration. (More on this in a follow-up post)

   Two, get the country’s financial house in order by

      ◉ raising taxes on the wealthy and inheritance.

      ◉ raising the consumption tax gradually over the next ten years or so.

      ◉ raising the retirement age and age at which benefits kick in, and cutting benefits to the wealthy.

      ◉ reducing governmental waste (more on this below)

      ◉ lowering corporate taxes which are comparatively high and creating other incentives to encourage companies to keep manufacturing and jobs in Japan.

      ◉ scaling back on Koizumi reforms that made it easier for companies to rely on part-timers and contract workers and has brought down wages and standards for many in Japan. You can’t expect consumers to buy the crap your company produces if they don’t have the money to buy it or the security to plan for it.

      ◉ lowering property taxes to encourage the purchase of homes and condominiums.

      ◉ giving more autonomy to regional and local governments.

   Three, reduce government waste by

      ◉ eliminating the todôfuken (都道府県) system which divided Japan into prefectures that had been based loosely on the feudal system of the Edo period. The prefectures ought to be combined, creating half a dozen states or shû (州) or regional administrative blocks, such as Kyûshû-Okinawa, Shikoku, Chûgoku, Kansai, and so on. This will prevent much of the wasteful duplication of projects that have blighted the Japanese countryside with airports that are seldom used and museums that nobody in their right mind would ever visit. The mayor of Osaka, Tōru Hashimoto, and his Restoration Party (維新の会, Ishin no Kai) has been trying to do this with Ōsaka.

      ◉ giving these new regions more autonomy in and responsibility over how public money is raised and spent.

      ◉ breaking up the all too powerful and often inept bureaucracy.

      ◉ reducing the number of Diet members by at least half and putting in place term and age limits.

      ◉ ending the practice where a politician benefits financially for projects that he brings to his constituency. I am not a fan of pork barrel politics and think that politicians should be forbidden from voting in favor funding projects for his constituency because of conflict of interest. The politician should, however, be able to vote against those projects which go against the wishes and needs of his constituents.

   I could go on and on, but then, what does it matter to me? I’m just a stupid gaijin.

The Incredibly Shrinking Nation

   In 2004 Japan’s population peaked at 127.8 million people[1]. Because the fertility rate[2] in Japan has remained far below the 2.2 or so needed to maintain a population, the population has been falling steadily. If nothing changes, the population of Japan is predicted to fall to less than 90 million by the year 2055.

   While the nation anxiously wrings its hands, I have to ask what to me seems like an obvious question: is this really a problem?

   Personally, I think there are far too many people in this crowded country and population decline ought to be not only welcomed, but celebrated as one of the successes of a modern society. If you go to nationmaster.com and have a look at the birth rates, you’ll find that Japan is fourth from the bottom, down there with Macau and Hong Kong, two of the worlds most densely populated places.[3] The countries with the highest birthrates are, not surprisingly, poor, less developed, and predominately African ones.

   Now, I realize that with population decline comes a number of seemingly knotty issues, such as how the pension system will be funded, and so on.[4] But, on the whole, I think the demographic change provides far more opportunities than it does challenges. (The same can be said about last year’s massive earthquake and tsunami. I’ll write more about this later.)

   While the population of Japan as a whole has been in decline for the past eight years, you might be surprised to learn that cities like Fukuoka have grown steadily.

   When I first moved to Fukuoka in 1993, the city had a population of 1.246 million people. Since then, the population has increased and stands at 1.443 people today. The foreign community has doubled from 12,621 in 1993 to 24,555 in 2011.

   What is the cause of this growth? One theory (my own) ascribes the increase to the comparatively large number of attractive women in the Fukuoka, the so-called Hakata Bijin (博多美人, “Hakata Beauty”), which has eager men flocking to the city in droves.[5] Others point more correctly to kasoka (過疎化), or the depopulation of towns and villages as people pull up stakes and move to the cities where there are better-paying jobs and more opportunities. 

   Out of curiosity, I looked into the demographics of Iizuka, that oft-maligned (mostly by me) city to the northwest of Fukuoka, to see how the population had changed over the years. I was surprised to see that although the city’s population was down from a high of 140,463 people in 1995, it was still higher than in the decades following the end of the war when the mines were still giving up plenty of coal and jobs abounded. I guess having a powerful politician fighting for your cause—in this case former Prime Minister Tarô Aso—does have its benefits, if not plenty of pork barrel. The city is today home to one of the campuses of Kyûkôdai (九工大, Kyûshû Institute of Technology).

   Fukuoka, though, has much more going for it, which might explain why so many people from throughout the Kyûshû-Okinawa region relocate here. That might also explain why for several years running Fukuoka has been chosen by a number of magazines, including Monocle, as one of the world’s best cities. (Personally, I think that’s going a little too far. It is a nice place, but one of the world’s best? C’mon, who ya kiddin’?)[6]

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[1] Numbers vary. The Japanese language site gave the above figure. Another English language site had the population at 128.1 million in 2010.

[2] The fertility rate refers to the average number of children born to women throughout their reproductive years. The fertility rate, which was 3.65 in 1950, fell to 1.91 in 1975. It stands around 1.37 today.

[3] Japan is the 38th most densely populated country in the world.

[4] I will discuss this so-called problem in the next post.

[5] Many young women will disagree with this, claiming that the city doesn’t have many men. They’ll even argue that there are eight women for every available man. I don’t know where this statistic comes from, but I’ve heard it again and again over the years. Funny, but the two single women who first told me of this imbalance have moved to Tôkyô where—surprise, surprise—they remain single.

[6] I often joke that “Fukuoka is a nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit it”. There just isn’t that much for tourists to do and see. 

Sign o' the Times

   The other evening the doorbell rang. When I went to go see who it was, I found a balding salesman with an awful set of teeth. He had come to my door before several months earlier trying to hawk a membership to a chain of restaurants and probably assumed that I didn’t remember him from all the other salesmen that come a-knocking at my door. Or, perhaps he just didn’t remember me.

  That happens a lot--my remembering people but not being remembered in return, so much so, it used to get me down.

   I long suspected that the reason I was being forgotten was that I was failing to leave an impression strong enough on the people I met. Obviously, what I needed to do was to assert myself more. I needed to be a go-getter, a hustler with a powerful handshake and a ready smile! That is, at least, what my father used to grumble to me about when I was growing up. A niggling doubt has remained with me ever since. (Let's call it my legacy.)

   But, then, my wife offered up an alternative theory: “The reason people don’t remember you is because they’re not very bright. They simply haven’t got as good a memory as you do.”

   She said to me this after I had finally gotten ‘round to meeting a new friend of hers named Laura.

   The two of them had met a few months earlier at a local park where they had brought their children to play. Before long, they were meeting for coffee and having lunch together. One day, my wife showed me a picture of Laura and all the things she had mentioned about the woman came together.

   “I know her,” I said. “We met about ten years ago and chatted briefly. We were never friends, but we knew many of the same people. She might even know me.”

   “She said she didn’t.”

   “Did you show her a picture of me?”

   “Yes, and she said she still didn’t know me.”

   Granted, as the sexy, vivacious and outgoing Filipina that she was, Laura was going to leave more of an impression on people than a brooding and quiet undiscovered author like me ever would. Still, there really weren’t that many foreigners living in Fukuoka at the time. Even if we hadn’t met and chatted all those years ago, she could have at least remembered my face. Not the most handsome one, I suppose, but certainly not a monstrosity.

   So, be it.

   It goes without saying that I felt much better after my wife paid me that compliment and I can stand a little taller now when I meet someone for the second time who says, not as a question, but as a statement of presumed fact: “We haven’t met, have we?”

   So, the salesman at the door says he’s sorry to disturb me, but do you have time?

   I tell him I don’t.

   He continues speaking all the same. What has he got to lose?

   To my surprise, he does not have anything to sell me today. He is, instead, willing to pay good money for old jewelry.

   “Have you got any gold or platinum lying, say, in the back of a drawer or in your closet?”

   “’Fraid not,” I say, closing the door.

   Gold. Now, if you want to see something (choose the adjective most appropriate to your emotional and financial circumstance: amazing, shocking, exciting, disgusting, frightening, etc.), go check the meteoric rise in the price of the spot gold over the past five to ten years. Up and up and up she goes, when she’ll drop nobody knows. Those in the business of selling gold will have you believe that the price will continue to climb indefinitely. Maybe they’re right. Personally, I believe that so long as the economic situation remains unpredictable, investors will continue to purchase gold in lieu of other investments as a store of value, meaning the price will probably rise further. Some argue the price will rise as high as $2,300 per ounce this year. (It hovered around $1,800 earlier this month.) That said, buying gold as an “investment” doesn’t make much sense. As the Economist wrote in 2010, “it pays neither a dividend, like a share, nor a coupon, like a bond, nor a rent, like property.”

   Contrary to what I told the gold buyer, I do own gold. Quite a bit of it, actually, in bullion and coin. I started purchasing gold regularly about five years ago when prices were half what they are today. My reason for doing so was not as an investment--although it has been mildly entertaining to watch the price shoot up over the years--but rather as insurance.

   I am not so much a pessimist as I am wary. It is not inconceivable that Japan’s economy collapse one day under the weight of public debt and the yen loses much of its value, or that China decides to gain, by military force, access to the frozen methane or other natural gasses under the waters lying in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, or that a desperate North Korea lobs several Taepo Dong missiles at the country, or that Japan is incapacitated by another cataclysmic natural disaster. And, I don’t want to be stranded, unable to return to the States or wherever it is I would flee to, when that days comes. Hence the gold.

   Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.

   In Lebanon, it is not unusual for families of means to keep a horde of cash in a variety of currencies (as well as AK47s and ammunition) in case civil war breaks out again--always a possibility--or Israel with its itchy trigger finger--decides to bomb. (Few people in the west are unaware of the frequency of Israeli air strikes against, and incursions into, the country.) Seeing how my relatives there prepared for such possibilities impressed me the last time I visited and I started thinking more seriously about my own family’s security.

   Another sign of the times came via a fax--yes, a fax--that arrived the very same evening. (The only reason I have a fax machine is because people still insist on sending documents that way.) It was sent by the Recruit company, a classified, publishing, and human resource giant here in Japan. Recruit publishes a number of magazines, one of which is Keiko to Manabu. Literally meaning “Lessons and Learning”, the title of the magazine is a homonym of a woman’s name, Keiko, and a Man’s name, Manabu, lending it, I suppose, a friendly ring. The magazine is published regionally and features ads for all kinds of schools. If you want to learn, for example, how to put on a kimono (what the Japanese call kitsuke) you just thumb through the magazine to that section and look at the schools listed there and call one up.

   I used to advertise in Keiko to Manabu. The first time I placed an ad in the magazine was about ten years ago. At the time, the only schools advertising in it were the major nation-wide Eikaiwa chains, such as Aeon, Geos, and Nova. Considering the cost of an ad, I could understand why. The cheapest ad, a dinky 1/8-page rectangle, cost about 70-80,000 yen per month.

   But, my business at the time was suffering and I needed to do something different to get new students as the method I had been using was no longer effective. (Too many people were imitating me.) So, biting the bullet, I took out a series of ads with the magazine and crossed my fingers.

   To my delight, the ad was a huge success so I continued using K&T for the next several years. Eventually, I managed to get the price down to 50,000 yen a month, which was still kind of expensive for a small operation like mine, but I could generally recoup the cost through new enrollment within a few months.

   But then five years or so ago, the effectiveness of the ad started to peter out. One of the problems was the Nova bankruptcy, which put a damper on the entire English-learning market, another was the number of other small school owners who were once again following my modest lead. And so, I pulled my ads. (Incidentally, I have since eschewed print media entirely, sticking to the Internet where I seem to once again have the edge over my competition.)

   In the years that I stopped advertising in K&T and a number of other magazines, I have watched with interest how the price of advertising in print media has come down, down, down. They can’t give the space away anymore. And that is what some of them do. One saleswoman called to say they had a space that had to be filled by tonight. How much, I asked. Ten thousand yen. “Ten thousand yen?" I said. "Deal!” I got three students out of that, two of whom studied for over three years, meaning a ten-thousand yen gamble on the advertising roulette table paid out over 25:1. Not bad.

   Yesterday evening’s fax from Keiko to Manabu made a tempting offer and for the first time in years I seriously considered once again placing an ad in the magazine. One month’s advertising fee only cost five thousand yen. Five thousand yen! (I spend that much money on a bottle of rum.) In addition, they were throwing in advertising space on their online site for free. Such space used to go for about twenty-thousand a month.

   In the end, I crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the garbage. Obviously, at prices that low the magazine no longer had the pull it once had. I might gain a student or two, yes, but I would probably gain five salesmen who would hound me into placing further ads in their magazine. No thanks.

   Let me tell you, as much as I like watching the TV series Mad Men, advertising is not a business I would like to be in today.

Cost of Living

   A month or so ago there was a report on NBC’s Nightly News about the rising cost of living in the United States. In spite of the anemic recovery and stubbornly high unemployment figures, consumer prices were steadily rising, exacerbating a difficult situation for millions of Americans who were already struggling to make ends meet.

   The report went on to list the average price of the following items:

A dozen eggs    $1.68

A pound of chicken    $1.30

A pound of beef    $3.62

A gallon of milk    $3.62

A pound of coffee    $5.24

   My first reaction was, “A gallon of milk? A pound of beef? Who the hell buys that much?” My second reaction was, “Good god, that’s cheap!”

   Obviously, I’ve been living too long in Japan where meat is sold by the gram (100g = 3.53oz), milk by the liter (0.26gal), and where the sticker shock of groceries would send the average American pensioner to an early grave. (Even a multi-millionaire relative of mine who was posted to Tôkyô several years ago complained of the prices. Now that’s expensive!)

   Curious to know how local prices compared, I went to the neighborhood supermarket and came up with the following:

Six eggs    ¥158

100g of chicken    ¥98

100g of beef    ¥480

1 liter of milk    ¥198

7 oz of Lions coffee    ¥998 ~

   In American units and dollars these would come to (drum roll, please):

A dozen eggs    $4.10, or 2.5 times more expensive

A pound of chicken    $5.79, or 4.5 times more expensive

A pound of beef    $28.30, or 7.82 times more expensive

A gallon of milk    $9.73, or 2.69 times more expensive

A pound of Lions coffee $29.63, or 5.65 times more expensive

   With prices these high, consumption habits are naturally going to be different. Instead of buying a gallon of milk, a Japanese housewife will buy just one liter and make it last. (No chugging milk straight out of the bottle here.) She’ll also prepare meals with far more vegetables and seafood, which tend to be much more affordable, than her American counterpart. In Japan, for instance, hamburger patties are often made with a mixture of ground pork and beef, known as aibiki (合い挽き), which is cheaper and many would argue tastier than pure beef. (I agree.)

   The Japanese housewife will, generally speaking, fix a larger percentage of her family’s meals herself rather than rely on store-bought items, such as pre-cooked deli goods and frozen foods. Cooking from scratch not only lowers costs considerably, but is more healthful, as well. More meals will be eaten at home, too, meaning that, all things considered, the Japanese family probably spends a lot less on food than would seem possible given the prices of groceries. (I’ve tried to find stats on the Engel’s Co-efficient[1] by country to see how Japan compares to the U.S. and other countries, but have so far been unsuccessful.)

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[1] Engel’s Law states that as income rises, the proportion of income spent on food falls, even if actual expenditure on food rises. In Japan, the Engel’s co-efficient, which is taught in junior high school home economics classes, describes the percent of income spent on food.

Itchy Feet

   Sometimes when your feet itch, you just gotta scratch them. 

   One Wednesday a few weeks ago when I was running errands in town, I was overcome with the urge to head towards the beach.

   There was a pile of things that needed to be done at home, but figured I'd already put them off this long another day wouldn't hurt. And so, off I went in my usual meandering, zigzagging way towards Fukuhama, a dismal stretch of sand just beyond an equally dreary public housing project, and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant. (How charming.) The reason I wanted to go there was that it was the nearest "beach" where BBQs and fireworks, two essentials in the Japanese summer, were allowed. 

   On the way, I bumped into Kojima, the owner of one of my favorite izakaya, Manten Shûraku (萬天集楽). He was delivering bentôs at the time. His restaurant/bar has seen some pretty dramatic ups and downs over the years, and, in order to bolster sales during this most recent downturn, he and his staff have resoted to selling bentôs during the day. They have proven quite popular and if you don't reserve one, chances are they'll sell out by the time you pop into Manten.

   I had, by chance, just eaten one of his bentôs only thirty minutes earlier and told him that it had been delicious as always.

   Kojima thanked me and asked what I was doing in that neighborhood. 

   I'm off to the beach, I replied and continued on my way. 

   The fastest way (when walking, that is) to get to the beach from where I live is to walk past the fish market and cut through the harbor. It's also the most interesting. Across the harbor is the shipyard of Fukuoka Zôsen, a shipbuilder. It seems to be a good business to be in as they are constantly launching ships.

   A number of refueling ships are usually moored at the quayside.

   The newly painted pink building is a company which produces ice for the fishing boats. This begs the question (at least in my mind) of how ice is made. Mind you, I'm not talking about sticking a tray of water into a sub-zero compartment and a few hours later getting ice cubes. No, what I've always wondered about is how one lowers the temperature to below the freezing point, that is how refridgeration works. I understand the concept, but I doubt if I would be able to reproduce it in a jungle à la The Mosquito Coast. (My mojitos would have to be served lukewarm.)

   There are always piles and piles of palletes stacked up at the end of the pier. Freshly caught fish is placed in them and packed in ice. 

   From the harbor you can take one of three routes. Up and over Nishi Kôen (West Park), or either south or north around the smalll mountain the park is located on. If I'm heading for Momochi Hama, I tend to take the southern route which brings you to the old neighborhood of Tôjin Machi with all of its temples.

   Today I took the northern route to save time and about fifteen minutes later found myself at the entrance of Fukuhama. As expected, the beach was all but deserted, save one slim man in surfer trunks who looked somewhat familiar. 

   My iPhone started ringing.

   I thought that was you, I said, answering the phone. 

   It was Tarô, the owner of another bar and restaurant I frequent called Kona Cafe.

   I often joke that I don't have friends, only bartenders, and this day that couldn't have been closer to the truth.

   What are you doing, Tarô asked when I sat down next to him on the beach. 

   I didn't feel like working, I answered.

   Neither did I, he said back. 

   When I told him that I had tried to go to his place for lunch the other day, he apologized, explaining that he only did lunch on the weekends now. He added that business was hurting. It had been slow enough what with the Lehman shock, he said, but then the earthquake hit . . . 

   It was the same everywhere. Ever since the earthquake and tsunami, Japanese have been exhibiting jishuku (自粛), or self-restraint which has only added to Japan's woes. 

   The Economist has reported that "amid the gloom the outlook for a robust recovery has actually been brightening . . . forecasting a boom in 2012 and 2013." Be that as it may, but until people start feeling confident about Japan's prospects, they won't be willing to go out for dinner and drinks as often as they used to. In the meantime, friends like Tarô and Kojima have to do what they can to drum up business.

   Tarô said the eighth anniversary of the opening of his bar was coming up and he had doubts that he could keep it going for much longer. A friend of his was shutting down own restaurant after about ten years.

   It'd be a shame if Kona Cafe ever went bust. It's such a nice little place and his loco moco really can't be beat. (Trust me, I'm something of a connoisseur of the humble loco moco.)

   Changing the subject, Tarô suggested heading over to Momochi Hama to get some beers. Besides, he added, if we hang out together too long on this beach people will start to think we're gay. My treat.

   One of my policies is to never say No when someone offers to buy me a drink. Good things usually happen.

    So, we made our way towards Momochi, bullshitting along the way. Once there, we plopped our arses down at the counter of a kebab stand that opened up for the summer months. It was run by an Iranian who spoke faultering Japanese and zero English despite having lived in Japan for over two decades. Made me wonder how he was able to function. 

   Tarô struck up a conversation with a fellow surfer while we were there. The guy was in his late 40s but didn't have an ounce of fat on his tan body (man pictured above and on the right). I should look so good. Apparently, he had come from Chiba to work on a rock festival that was being held two weeks later in the city and had an entourage of similarly chiseled and tanned friends with him. What a life. 

   As Tarô and the guy were talking, a bevy of young girls in bikinis came up to me and asked straight off how old I was. Forty-five, I replied. Why lie? I asked one of the cuter ones how old her father was and got a surprising answer: I don't have a father. How about you, I asked her friend. Me neither, was the reply.

   Although still in high school, they were all drinking and smoking in that affected way novices smoke. One of them even had an infant with them and passed the chubby kid over to me to hold. 

   You married, they asked. 

   I am.

   I popped out my iPhone and started flipping through photos of my own son who was younger than the teen's kid. (How's that for irony?)

   I asked if the girl was still in school. She was, she replied. That's good, I said and asked where she went. 

   Dai-ichi, she answered. Do you know it? 

   I did. The Fukuoka "Number One" High School was one of the worst schools in the city. I asked if they all went to the same school to which two replied that they attended Kyûshû Girls High School. The hair on these two girls was dyed brown and both of them had pierced navels. 

   Pointing at their belly rings, I asked, Isn't that against the rules? Unlike just about everything else, the girls told me, they didn't have their belly buttons checked by their teachers.

   Naru heso, I replied.

   That, believe it or not, was the funniest thing I had said all week and the girls were rolling on the boardwalk. Naru heso is what the Japanese call an oyaji gag or a dajare (駄洒落), namely, the kind of pun an old fart might say after one too many glasses of shôchû. Naru heso is a corruption of naru hodo (成程), which means "indeed", "really", or "you don't say". Changing the hodo to heso, which means "navel", I was uttering a short phrase that had no real meaning, but was understood by all. (Sorry, humor doesn't translate very well.)

   At any rate, they all laughed and as the saying goes, make a girl laugh and you're half way up her leg. 

   Before long, it was time for the two of us to hit the road and go to work, so Tarô said good-bye to his fellow surfer and I bid a reluctant farewell to the girls.

   What had begun as a mediocre day for the two of us became, for me at least, one of the best days of summer.

Death and Taxes

Thought for the day: 

   Back in October of 2008 when Wall Street bankers were projected to receive some seventy billions dollars in bonuses despite having caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we were told that the bonuses were not only deserved, but also necessary to retain top talent.

   If we accept that these fat cats are truly as talented as they claim to be (and thereby deserving of their ludicrously high compensation) then surely they've got the talent to successfully conduct business with stricter regulations and higher taxes.

   And while I'm on the subject of taxes, you'd think that in these times when we're fighting two wars started by a Republican president paying higher taxes would be considered patriotic. But no. Death and taxes are not always certain. You won't find the sons of millionaires dying on the battlefield or many billionaires paying their "fair share".