The pandemic and technology are precisely why the U.S. economy has regained its golden crown at the top of the global economy and will create some distance in 2021.
I’ll explain why.
Sure, this sounds off considering that many viral new stories published these days are at the extreme limits of everything from society, politics, business, entertainment, and the list goes on.
But the truth is, instead of a handful of U.S. coastal cities mopping up the capital and opportunities, the effort for U.S. accelerated growth and the network effects juxtaposed to it, have spread their tentacles across the country.
To understand how the U.S. has gotten on, we must first look across the Pacific and Atlantic at how other “rich” countries have navigated the pandemic and inoculation effort.
Work time is Face time 24/7 and shut up about anything else or you can jump off the office roof.
That’s me welcoming you to the land of the rising sun — Japan.
Crazily enough, even in a pandemic spiraling out of control in an aging society, business conducted in-person is still more guaranteed than anything else.
Work from home?
Are you crazy? This is still a country that relies on fax machines and a mountain of paperwork to get things done.
The recent “modernization” effort came up with taking away the ink-based wooden stamp to sign off final contracts, instead, replacing it with ink pen signatures.
Bravo!
That happened last year and essentially is a microcosm of the snail’s rate of change in Japan’s economy. There’s a reason why the Mandarins passed them up so quickly with no fightback.
Tradition dies hard in places like these.
It’s a traditional business culture still run on World War 2 structures with management who grew up in the 1960s still forging the path for Japan Inc.
Japan still pays according to seniority and merit is just a cute term to banter about when talking to your cadre of lowly paid subordinates who are usually disenfranchised and overworked.
Demand for in-person interaction among employees and with external clients and suppliers is especially strong among older and smaller companies.
Considering 99.7% of Japan’s businesses are considered small, or medium-sized, then it pretty much means all of Japan.
What they don’t tell you is, these “meetings” also involve a copious amount of overdrinking, overspending, and incessant smoking to please clients who were born in the 1950s.
This is all in the name to create trust between the two parties.
If you watch snippets of Japanese news feeds over the past 16 months, it seems as if there has been no reduction in foot traffic when the cameras zoom in on main transport hubs.
Your eyes aren’t failing you.
Sadly, Japan just missed its best chance to modernize business practices and the next pandemic might be too far away to offer that next chance for wholesale changes.
Japan will continue its downwards trajectory with a niche specialty in robots while the living standard for the median Japanese person continues to drop precipitously and the graying of the society continues unabated.
If you thought Europe has been better, then yes, you are right. In many instances, remote work was allowed all across Europe during the pandemic, especially for finance jobs that include accounting and financial planning.
But recent surveys show that European management is lusting for a strict 100% in-person work schedule to mitigate cross-border tax problems such as German workers relocating to Poland to take advantage of the lower cost of living and the company ultimately becoming liable for Polish taxes.
The bigger problem with Europe’s economy is that it’s leveraged too much towards global tourism and the government does everything it can to disrupt innovation because of overly bureaucratic structures.
Europe accounts for 50% of the world’s tourist arrivals and is the most visited region in the world, according to UNWTO.
It accounts for 50% of the world’s tourist arrivals and 37% of global tourism receipts, it is the most visited region in the world.
The continent contributed around €1 trillion tourist revenue in 2019 and 18 million tourist jobs and that literally stopped in a heartbeat in March 2020.
These are 18 million jobs that can’t just move to work-from-home.
Instead of developing in-house tech companies, European regulators have sought maneuvers just to tax the U.S. ones to satisfy a thirst for revenue.
Europe, aside from Spotify and a handful of U.K. and Netherlands-based chip manufacturers, don’t have any big-time tech companies.
Remember that these tech companies usually contribute to the lions’ share of earnings growth and profits in the U.S. and China.
Instead of creating these jobs, European workers are mostly servicing U.S. companies from Western European R&D centers like Apple in Germany and offices such as Facebook’s London office.
Chinese companies in Europe like Huawei almost never hire non-Chinese people unless it's some low-level translating work.
At the onset of the pandemic, many New Yorkers loaded up the car, drove down to Florida or even over to Vermont, bought a house sight unseen, and started life anew from scratch.
That is the beauty of a true borderless state business and personal delivering synergies to the local population.
The EU of 27 states certainly is from this utopian seamless state.
I have a close colleague that was hired from a big American energy firm in Prague to an American cybersecurity corporation in Vienna, and he has not been able to file his application for 10 months even though the cities are a few hours train ride away.
Why?
Because the Austrian Embassy in Prague doesn’t process Non-EU citizens’ applications, even though he has a valid residence permit that allows him to work, and he has not been able to physically cross the border to file it directly in Vienna because of Machiavellian border restrictions.
Once filed, this application will take 3-4 months to process, all while he is just a few hours away.
When he finally gets authorization for a new Austrian work permit, he is required by Czech law to give a 10-week resignation notice to his employer.
This was on top of the botched virus roll-out which meant that many European state health systems thought it was a good idea to force citizens and residents alike to pre-register for the vaccine, register again, then make registration based on social security card numbers, and then change the registration interface on the website every 7-10 days.
Only to receive the first vaccine, then be required to wait in line for a whole day to confirm the address the immunity card should be sent to, only to get to the front of the line to find out the many hospitals didn’t upload the proper data into the database.
The excuse for this was that the nurses are too busy giving the vaccine shots.
Then, only to realize that receiving the card in the mail often didn’t happen then going back to the same office to ask if the card has even been mailed out yet, only for them to have no idea where your card is.
And that was just the first vaccine shot!
It’s not surprising that many Europeans in droves are skipping their 2nd shot because of the ridiculous bureaucracy involved in getting just 1 done let alone 2.
It’s comical to think that America actually FELL BEHIND others in the past 15 months.
The reality is that the swift recovery from and after the advent of the Pfizer vaccine has just been too powerful and too potent to think that the old world of Europe and Asia with outdated infrastructure and attitudes towards business progressivism can outdo the Yanks.
From my contacts in Europe, there has never been more of a desire to work for a European-based American corporation because they are still viewed as the best option.
And when you realize that many of the U.S. work-from-home initiatives are being transformed into hybrid work cultures with 2-3 days per week of facetime LIKE THEY SHOULD BE, it sure beats my colleague whose Austrian contract explicitly states face time 24/7 is waiting for him in Vienna with his contract crafted by European managers.
At least he is not working in Tokyo.
A JAPANESE LOW-TECH APPROACH STILL PERSISTS IN A BRAVE NEW WORLD!
