3 ms·

and QE is just kicking the can down the road a little further. We are the new Japan.

hkmurakami 7y ago
Frankly every (developed) country is the new Japan when you look at debt loads and demographic ratio trends. They’re the canary in the coal mine for all of us.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
in some ways, yes, but one difference is that our population is not shrinking. another is that our debt to GDP ratio is something like 90-100%, but Japan's is more like 200%. yet another is that we don't have the sort of nationalized healthcare system Japan has. also, Japan's been playing the "managed trade" game for decades now and they know how to do it well, whereas the US has been practicing a consumer driven economy better characterized by "free trade." in order to really become like Japan, we'd have to enlarge our federal level trade negotiation bureaucracy and become more mercantilistic, improve literacy rates and secondary school quality, and become more racially and culturally and linguistically homogeneous, as well as implement extremely strong gun control laws and lower the murder rate. we'd also need to increase government job-creation spending on infrastructure to the point where we're building bridges to nowhere all over the place, plenty of underutilized airports, etc and create even tighter restrictions on immigration than we have now (yeah, I know Japan is liberalizing immigration, but not very much).
- internet_user 7y ago
  Debt/GDP ratio doubled in 20 years, and the bulk of that change in the in 10 years or so. It won't take much longer to get to 200%, we are going to see it. I'm not sure what you are trying to say in the last two paragraphs? That we are somehow so fundamentally different, that the fiscal picture is not comparable?
  - HillaryBriss 7y ago
    i'm just trying to highlight some important factors beyond debt ratios that tell the story of an economy and quality of life for its participants: education levels, trade policy, portability and reliability of health insurance, population growth trends, murder rates, etc. we are "the new Japan" in only a very rough sense. i guess we might say we're the new Italy and the new Portugal and the new France, too? IDK.

Frankly every (developed) country is the new Japan when you look at debt loads and demographic ratio trends. They’re the canary in the coal mine for all of us.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

in some ways, yes, but one difference is that our population is not shrinking. another is that our debt to GDP ratio is something like 90-100%, but Japan's is more like 200%. yet another is that we don't have the sort of nationalized healthcare system Japan has. also, Japan's been playing the "managed trade" game for decades now and they know how to do it well, whereas the US has been practicing a consumer driven economy better characterized by "free trade." in order to really become like Japan, we'd have to enlarge our federal level trade negotiation bureaucracy and become more mercantilistic, improve literacy rates and secondary school quality, and become more racially and culturally and linguistically homogeneous, as well as implement extremely strong gun control laws and lower the murder rate. we'd also need to increase government job-creation spending on infrastructure to the point where we're building bridges to nowhere all over the place, plenty of underutilized airports, etc and create even tighter restrictions on immigration than we have now (yeah, I know Japan is liberalizing immigration, but not very much).

internet_user 7y ago
Debt/GDP ratio doubled in 20 years, and the bulk of that change in the in 10 years or so. It won't take much longer to get to 200%, we are going to see it. I'm not sure what you are trying to say in the last two paragraphs? That we are somehow so fundamentally different, that the fiscal picture is not comparable?
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  i'm just trying to highlight some important factors beyond debt ratios that tell the story of an economy and quality of life for its participants: education levels, trade policy, portability and reliability of health insurance, population growth trends, murder rates, etc. we are "the new Japan" in only a very rough sense. i guess we might say we're the new Italy and the new Portugal and the new France, too? IDK.