Nice article on Japan

[jpatter666]

Much conventional wisdom about the Japanese economy is wrong, by virtue of being out of date. Exports aren’t all that important. Households don’t save much. “Japan is just not as rich of a country as the United States. Productivity is significantly lower, and Japan is also not endowed with natural resources. That means prices will tend to be higher relative to incomes — that’s the definition of being poor”

http://neojaponisme.com/2014/01/15/j...c-mythbusting/

[gwynedd1]

Re: Nice article on Japan

Much conventional wisdom about the Japanese economy is wrong, by virtue of being out of date. Exports aren’t all that important. Households don’t save much. “Japan is just not as rich of a country as the United States. Productivity is significantly lower, and Japan is also not endowed with natural resources. That means prices will tend to be higher relative to incomes — that’s the definition of being poor”

http://neojaponisme.com/2014/01/15/j...c-mythbusting/

I'd be very careful about making a direct comparison. For one they are a nation state which has social benefits despite what the civil rights movement would like to pretend. It is well known that they have few natural resources which impacts them in the other direction; however natural resources can become a curse as old as Athens and Sparta. Slaves are a form of wealth, and in the usual way of false dichotomies, people miss that working poor people, make other people wealthy. Japan does not export social problems to the lower classes by importing low wage labor.

But yes Japan is now part of the old guard.


But if anyone want to go myth busting then the best one to bust is their national debt ratio being a problem. Never thought low levls of private debt should be a problem..but then most people don't know the national debt is the money supply.