It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what "Kurt Laughlin"
foisted Wed, 14 Jul 2004 03:48:58 GMT on
rec.crafts.metalworking , viz:

"William H. Shuey" wrote

About 20 years ago a Japanese delegation of Engineers were given a tour
of the plant where I worked. After the tour there was a get together in
the plant cafeteria. The slippage of U.S. technology was a subject that
came up.
One Japanese engineer smiled and said:
"Graduation of U.S. colleges is answer; two lawyers to every engineer.
Japanese colleges graduate 4 engineers to every lawyer!"


And about ten years after that their economy imploded - mainly because the
banks and real estate market collapsed. (All those engineers couldn't
invent their way outta that.) Now they have four unemployed engineers for
each of ours . . .

And the Japanese economy remains in a deflationary spiral, hobbled by
the fact that while the real estate market bubble popped, the loans based
on those inflated values haven't been "adjusted". Of course, as long as
payments are made, those loans are still counted as "good". But the
economy is going nowhere, slowly.

KL
"I'm an engineer. Where are my two lawyers?"


at one time tohoyo has a paper value higher than that of the
entire u.s. or so said an announcer on that japanese-english
sat station.