Lisa Rickard posted on Towers Perrin's annual tort costs survey yesterday, and today we get this:

The consulting firm Towers Perrin surveyed nearly 90,000 workers in 18 countries and found that just 3 percent of those contacted in Japan were willing to do extra work to add value to their companies. The global average was 21 percent, while 29 percent of Americans claimed that they demonstrate initiative at work.

This nifty little bit is from a Washington Post article on the Japanese version of Dilbert, by artist Makoto Yoshitani:

"I think a lot of people feel it is uncool to be gutsy at work," he said. "You want to do a good job . . . but you don't want to take it a step further."

Young office workers can easily see the folly of working too hard and measure its soul-crushing consequences, he said. They need only look at their parents and others in the postwar generation who sacrificed their personal lives to build Japan into the world's second-largest economy.

"Those generations older than us have no friends, and they have no hobbies," he said. "But we have found out that there are other ways to live."

That other way is the path taken by the "hodo-hodo zoku" -- the "so-so tribe" of youngish office workers who avoid stress, turn down promotions and regard ambition as a kind of cancer. Being so-so is plenty good enough for them.

Now I know that any attempt to paint a non-vulgar picture about the economy is met with scorn these days, but when people talk about our fundamentals being strong this is a good, if slightly odd, example. In our version of Dilbert the main frustration is ineffective management that thwarts excellence; in the Japanese version the threat is excellence itself.