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Japan remains one of the nicest places in the world to live. It is still a huge success story. There are two interesting ideas on why Japan gets so dumped on

Japan remains one of the nicest places in the world to live. It is still a huge success story. There are two interesting ideas on why Japan gets so dumped on as a failure, or "moribund". 1) While the Japanese people are doing fine, western banks and investors and businesses have consistently gotten soaked when trying to play Japan over the last 20 years. The people who write about Japan for the Wall Street Journal have a very different lens from an ordinary person. 2) The Japanese have strongly rejected the western liberal agenda, and it's working out rather well for them. Can't have people clued in on that, so write about "moribund" Japan. The Japanese remain nationalistic and race conscious. They believe in Japan as a unified cultural nation and reject immigration. This has a great deal to do with the high quality of life and personal safety in Japan. It also ties into how they maintain a public social welfare system that works comparatively well. They also believe in protectionist policies (rightly or wrongly), which do not appear to be doing a great deal of harm.

russell 16y ago
I get a really mixed picture which is all secondhand. As I said in another comment, my ex (10 years ago) was Brazilian-Japanese and several of my brothers and sisters in-law worked there as guest-workers in the second tier subcontractors. They weren't treated as true "Japanese" because they were born in Brazil. They were looked upon as ruffians. I also see stories, mainly not mainstream, about disaffection among young people with the conformity, the bullying in school, the lack of opportunity if you are not a graduate of U of Tokyo. And then there are the larger issues that you get with an aging population where the replacement rate is less than 1. Who pays the retirement bills? We are facing similar issues, but without the same urgency. This isnt real criticism, just impressions. I would love to have a Japanese native jump in.
baguasquirrel 16y ago
The finance people have a point. The high level of government services and comfort thereby provided are funded by unsustainable levels of government debt that are well beyond any Western country, and practically all of it is privately held. By old people. At some point, the old people are going to start dying, and then there won't be anything to fund that debt anymore. So Japan will default. It will be the biggest sovereign default in the history of mankind. And of course, dead old people will be footing the bill. In the meantime, the birthrate continues crashing and the young in Japan will languish. This is why it's said that Japan will rot, but it will rot in isolation. The big unknown that I'm interested in is how the collapse will take hold. There are two runaway trains that I can see. The first will be the debt. It seems likely that we will see a restructuring towards a bureaucratic economy that takes care of the old people, but eventually all the old people will die. Then we may have another runaway train if the mechanisms for defunding the services racket are in place.

russell 16y ago

I get a really mixed picture which is all secondhand. As I said in another comment, my ex (10 years ago) was Brazilian-Japanese and several of my brothers and sisters in-law worked there as guest-workers in the second tier subcontractors. They weren't treated as true "Japanese" because they were born in Brazil. They were looked upon as ruffians. I also see stories, mainly not mainstream, about disaffection among young people with the conformity, the bullying in school, the lack of opportunity if you are not a graduate of U of Tokyo. And then there are the larger issues that you get with an aging population where the replacement rate is less than 1. Who pays the retirement bills? We are facing similar issues, but without the same urgency. This isnt real criticism, just impressions. I would love to have a Japanese native jump in.

baguasquirrel 16y ago

The finance people have a point. The high level of government services and comfort thereby provided are funded by unsustainable levels of government debt that are well beyond any Western country, and practically all of it is privately held. By old people. At some point, the old people are going to start dying, and then there won't be anything to fund that debt anymore. So Japan will default. It will be the biggest sovereign default in the history of mankind. And of course, dead old people will be footing the bill. In the meantime, the birthrate continues crashing and the young in Japan will languish. This is why it's said that Japan will rot, but it will rot in isolation. The big unknown that I'm interested in is how the collapse will take hold. There are two runaway trains that I can see. The first will be the debt. It seems likely that we will see a restructuring towards a bureaucratic economy that takes care of the old people, but eventually all the old people will die. Then we may have another runaway train if the mechanisms for defunding the services racket are in place.