I mean, you could almost make the same argument for Canada & the US. It's mostly due to political gridlock here, but look at all the crumbling bridges and dams

I mean, you could almost make the same argument for Canada & the US. It's mostly due to political gridlock here, but look at all the crumbling bridges and dams -- the transit that never got built, and the feeling that somehow we are wealthy yet we never have any money for important issues. Japan's GDP per capita still keeps growing. And the average Japanese still has an excellent quality of life. Japan also has so many pointless infrastructure projects; things like laying concrete into river beds to control their flows, or retention systems to stop mudslides that only started because they clear-cut forests and replaced them with sugi as a make-work project... The workers are there, if they got rid of the make-work projects.