This article was written in 1993, a year where Japanese GDP per capita was 25%+ more than the US's. This was the peak of American fear against Japan taking ove

This article was written in 1993, a year where Japanese GDP per capita was 25%+ more than the US's. This was the peak of American fear against Japan taking over the world, economically. With the empirical foregone conclusion that Japan was better than the USA, many people including this author seemed keen to find reasons. Many people ultimately traced it back to the fundamental values of the US. Yet looking 23 years forward in the future, the US GDP per capita is now about 50% greater than Japan's. In fact, Japan has barely moved in these 23 years, and it's interesting to note everything the author citing above as Japan's philosophical advantage being recast by more recent commentators as weaknesses. To wit, here are the following praised ideas, and the most recent critique of them in light of some developments in the last 23 years: - "Nation/group above the individual" -- Japanese stagnation has been strongly blamed on a culture where companies have less ability to hire young but very talented employees because that would upset the age-competence hierarchy, and other such rigid structure. - "Deliberate development needed for growth" -- Witness the Chinese high-speed rails to nowhere, the failure of the US federal forway into being a solor company VC. - Close association of banks/conglomerates -- Theories abound of Japanese zombie banks and companies with negative value being propped up by bad loans. And sorry for bashing on Japan -- I have nothing against them personally. They just happen to be a stand in for a star of the alternate non-Anglo economic theory in the essay above. (These cycles of being anti-US-value when another system is dominate has been surprisingly common. Communism was championed most strongly within the US itself exactly at times when the US was in a recession but the USSR was doing well. For example the early 1930s or early 1980s.)