Chris Zell wrote: I think it is difficult to consider Japan's considerable achievements, > beautiful countryside and hard working people without also considering its > bleak future. Japan is dying. >
This is getting off topic but . . . The countryside is blighted these days. However, to describe the present situation as "dying" is ridiculous. In 1866 the country was in a civil war and in danger of being taken over by Europe. >From 1933 to 1945 it was run by militaristic who killed millions of people in China and elsewhere, and got themselve into hopeless wars that destroyed the whole country and killed millions. Compared to those situations the country is in a bed of roses. Yes, if present trends continue, the population will drop by half in 100 years. That is true in Italy as well. And as my late mother often said, if the trend in television sales in 1949 had continued the world would have been knee deep in televisions by 1970 but *no trend lasts forever*. That is the cardinal rule of social science! No trend lasts forever. A population decline in an otherwise healthy, secure and wealthy population is sure to correct itself and reverse sooner or later. For now, Japan would be a lot better off with fewer people and more space, in my opinion. The notion that it will take 17 million "foreign workers" to care for the elderly "over the next 40 years" is another example of a straight line extrapolation with the assumption that a trend will last forever. It reminds me of the "Irish maid crisis" in upper class U.S. circles circa 1905, in which people worried where the next generation of cheap labor would come from once Ireland's economy recovered. Wealthy people did not anticipate washing machines and vacuum cleaners, but they should have, because both had been invented and were starting to take off. The author of this article apparently has not imagined that Japanese industry will invent robots to take over much of burden of caring for elderly people. He should. Japanese industry is good at robots and they are bound to improve in 40 years. They are already making things like automated bathtubs that do away with the need for an attendant (which look a lot more inviting to me than conventional baths, by the way), along with many other handy automated gadgets and robots. Japan is stuck in a long term deflationary slump it can't get out of. It is > continuing to pile up a national debt that is frightening - and all the more > so since that debt will never be repaid by an elderly population. It's > turning into a cautionary tale about too much reliance on Keynesian ideas. > I don't know much about economics but I just happened to be reading a book about Keynes and I believe you have that backwards. Keynes' policies are good for getting out of a deflationary slump. They tend to cause inflation, which most people in Japan would welcome. However, the deflation is still moderate compared to the 1930s. Washing machines are down 27% compared to ten years ago, but food prices are hardly changed. It does not seem like a crisis. It is actually rather nice for elderly people living on a fixed income, of which there are many in Japan. The unemployment and growing homelessness *is* a crisis. - Jed
