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The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics > IMF affirmed that Jap

The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics > IMF affirmed that Japan's nominal GDP contracted by $1.8 trillion during 2012–2015 while real GDP contracted at an annual rate of 6.8 percent[58] in the second quarter of 2014, after the Consumption Tax hike came into effect in April. This fall is the worst since the devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster[59][60] hit Japan in the first quarter of 2011 when the GDP shrank by an annualised 6.9 percent. So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami. That said, he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.

chii 4y ago
> he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake. if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake, and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  >and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information. That's ridiculous - everyone makes decisions under incomplete information - does that mean we can't be blamed for anything ?
  - danuker 4y ago
    Blame - yes. But it was not a mistake - it was the outcome of a deliberate process.
    - troutwine 4y ago
      A deliberate process that leads to an outcome you didn’t intend or want is one of the definitions of a mistake. > an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong
      - hackerlight 4y ago
        Poker players are trained to think a decision was a mistake only if the expected value of the decision was negative, not if the outcome happened to be negative. This is good because it removes the chance component from the outcome when evaluating the quality of the decision making process.
        troutwine 4y ago
        Whether that’s a good definition or not of ‘mistake’, it’s extremely context specific. Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect.
        hackerlight 4y ago
        It's context independent and can be applied anywhere. It's the maxim of not factoring in good or bad luck when evaluating the quality of a decision that's made under incomplete information (such as not being able to see the future). Simple and sensible. > Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect. Fair enough. I was commenting in the abstract, I have no view on Abenomics.
        moonchrome 4y ago
        >Simple and sensible. No, it only works in artificial environments where you get to sample a bunch of outcomes under the same decisions, with a known fixed probability distribution, to work out to an overall net positive. Economic policy is anything but this, a wrong decision can have catastrophic events where you don't get to make more than one decision, probability distribution is extremely complex and ever changing, and you need to account for that. You definitely don't want to apply artificial game logic.
        hackerlight 4y ago
- danuker 4y ago
  Good point. Still, I'd argue that changing a nationwide taxation system based on incomplete information is reckless (depending on incompleteness). They could have tried it in a small area beforehand, instead.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  That isn’t how you defines a mistake. To flip the logic, if you know something is a bad idea and do it anyway that’s not a mistake either, it’s intentional.
- eCa 4y ago
  > if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake Mistakes are by definition only known to be mistakes after the fact. If you know before you do something that it’s going to fail then it is not a mistake.
oars 4y ago
Look at the price of Yen to USD. Japan's economy is in shambles.
- wronglyprepaid 4y ago
  > Look at the price of Yen to USD. The instantaneous exchange rate between two currencies does not give any information about the strength or weakness of the economies that operate on those currencies.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Interest rate hikes enacted to fight inflation also raise a currency in the forex markets. (Because holding said currency gives you relatively better yield vs before the hike.) A currency is a tool of the economy controllable by a central bank, not a competition (otherwise everyone would d shoot for high deflation).
pletnes 4y ago
You don’t even know that any other policy would be better, because we can’t rewind and retry. And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy." But the economy is a very basic, essential thing. If it is bad, things are indeed bad for many people, which counts more to them than the great politic. Johnson would not have to worry about anything, if the UK's economy would be running smoothly. Which it does not and the brexit is basically still unsolved and a great feeling of insecurity remains. This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals. He resigned yesterday, he's been brought down. But it wasn't really the economy, I think, as much as people harbouring hopes of being PM getting sick of being made to look idiots by his constantly changing stories.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      He's still Prime Minister until he's replaced. Which is probably inevitable, but like in all horror movies you need to make sure the monster is actually dead before your relax.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    > This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals. I can't tell if you aren't aware he resigned or if your meaning here is that you figure Johnson will stand, be re-elected by his MPs and then pretend everything is back to normal, presumably while continuing to leak MPs to both by-election defeats and defections. I wouldn't put it past Boris to attempt such a thing, but my guess is that it would be humiliating. There are dozens of MPs who'd back Boris in the hope of some reward, but far more see this as a useless cause and want to be first in line for a ministerial job under one of his rivals who might survive a general election.
shapefrog 4y ago
On the flip side the people are very well educated, good healthcare, ultra low unemployment, ultra low poverty, and happy. There is more to life than trying to get the made up number that is GDP to print a positive number every quarter.
- u10 4y ago
  I wouldn't describe Japan as a "happy" country.
  - nxm 4y ago
    Perhaps people in Japan are more reserved, but that doesn’t mean they’re not happy.
  - bouncycastle 4y ago
    Happiness is not just an economic thing. It's also culture, and that takes generations to fix. From an economic standpoint, Japan has a high standard of living. Good medical system, plentiful and cheap food, affordable housing, quality education, few crime and an endless amount of job vacancies. On the other hand... the air quality has been awful this year..but you cannot have everything perfect in any country.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rendall 4y ago
  > ...and happy. Japan sits 62nd out of 153 in the 2020 World Happiness Report at a score of 5.871 (range 7.809-2.567, normalizes to 0.63) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020_re... Happier than average, but that average includes countries wracked by war, poverty and corruption. Edit: the 2022 World Happiness Report ranks Japan at 54th out of 146 with a score of 6.039 normalized to 0.67, an improvement, and is now comparable to Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Honduras. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-and-trust-during-covid-19-and-beyond/#ranking-of-happiness-2019-2021 https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-...
cstross 4y ago
Note that Japan is in a savage demographic crunch, with a TFR well below replacement and an ageing population, which means the ratio of workers to dependents (the elderly) is dropping. Which in turn reduces average productivity and GDP. Actual population decline is deflationary and Japan's been in that situation since the start of the 1990s. This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
- danuker 4y ago
  > and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    They could probably attract millions of Westerners tomorrow if they really wanted. Whether or not that's a good idea / they'd like the influx is another question. But, they could do it without changing anything except their insanely difficult immigration schemes.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Abe did that. It's very easy to immigrate to Japan. The reason this succeeded is that nobody in the country noticed, which is why you don't know about it. It's not that attractive to Westerners if only because wages are low so you can't pay off those student loans. (Immigrate as in get into the country on a work visa, not as in get permanent residency - that's doable on a "highly skilled professional" visa though.)
octodog 4y ago
Those numbers are wildly misleading. The Q2 2014 GDP drop was 1.7% but this is largely because consumers brought forward consumption of big ticket items to Q1 - where the economy grew by 0.8%. The economy ACTUALLY only shrank by 0.1% in 2014 but then grew by 0.4%,0.2%,0.5% the following three years, which is actually a lot for Japan.
icelancer 4y ago
Abenomics was not likely a good idea at the time nor in retrospect, but a lot of the GDP contraction has less to do with monetary policy and far more to do with cultural/social policies that the population embraces - government-sanctioned or not. Very low birth replacement rates, very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale, Sony et al being beaten by Intel to the correct Silicon Valley model, and so forth all contribute to contracting GDP quite a bit. EDIT: This is not to say I think Japan has the wrong idea or whatever; I agree that chasing GDP is not some end-all be-all thing. I'm just saying that while I don't regard Abe as a genius economist, I don't think it's too fair he get a ton of blame either given that his country's demographics, social model, and other factors likely contributed far more towards the inertia of a shrinking economy.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale These are all things that Abe’s government and policies strongly supported.
patrec 4y ago
> The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics": I don't think you get assassinated for economic policies (unless you really impoverish a large section of the population). I think it's more likely he got assassinated for some fairly random loony reason by someone unhinged or for his non-economy related right wing policies (e.g. on defense and foreign policy).
strogonoff 4y ago
It is a common pitfall to attribute both the good stuff and the bad stuff to whoever is in power at the time. We like to forget that success and failure are to large extent dependent on current context (economical, societal and so on). This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something! Improving %metric% thanks to general development and despite the dictator in power is very much a thing, just as declining %metric% could have been the best possible outcome.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  > This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something! We /assume/ they have popular support, in reality we don't really know.
  - strogonoff 4y ago
    It’s true that in one case there’s no elections and in the other case the elections are most likely rigged, so it’s hard to know for sure. I base this on discussions I had with people from both countries (numerous in real life, as well as some online, including here), there are enough anecdata points for me to form this opinion.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      I just moved to Taiwan after spending 10 years living in Singapore. I've not met a single person from China in Singapore who liked the CCP. I can't comment on Russia because I honestly don't think I've met anyone in person from Russia. I wouldn't take online as an indication of anything tho as people from China always say in person they would never admit out loud because they fear for their family.
      - FooBarWidget 4y ago
        I'm Chinese and I'll have to disagree with the idea that Chinese "fear speaking up". That is a stereotype. China isn't that sort of place. There are 500 protests a day — not to overthrow the government, but to ask them to do better or to address grievances. Criticisms are all over the place if you look online. Most likely you were just in a community with people who are unhappy about China. I live in Netherlands and most Chinese here (specifically: those who came from the mainland) are supportive of China. Those from Taiwan or who were born here are a mixed bag.
jeeeb 4y ago
You’re looking at nominal GDP measured in USD over a period when the value of the yen fell significantly relative to the USD. If you look at the trend you can clearly see the nominal GDP fell back down to trend after a massive spike during the high yen period post-GFC. I lived in Japan most of that period and no one thought of it as a recession. Unemployment fell to essentially zero, the stock market boomed, the lower yen was welcomed and ultimately “real” (PPP) GDP rose. There’s a reason Abe was able to serve as PM for so long in a country otherwise notorious for cycling switching leaders.
yucky 4y ago
>So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami. That's an odd take considering Japan's economy has been contracting for 25 years. Can you be specific on how his economic contractions was different than those those before (or after) him?
Zerverus 4y ago
Japan is much more complicated than that and apply capitalist measures of success isnt doing it justice - Demographic crunch, as mentioned. The country not descending into uncontrolled decline may already been a decent achievement - Focus on quality. This is unique to Japan and runs counter capitalist growth stories. Japanese consumers value quality. a lot. But it’s bad for business in the growth sense, you don’t need to buy a new fridge for 10-15 years because it works and isn’t made obsolete artificially, Japanese consumers are happy, growth : consumption metrics are not. Quality is just not captured as a variable in the western / American way of looking at economic health. Not having train delays, having great customer service, no forced obsolete products, high reliability in services and products are not reflected / incentivized in that model - they don’t exist but that’s not how Japan works. Japan has issues, quite a few, but it’s not nearly the hellhole American economic publications love to make it out for decades now. It may be a nightmare scenarios for the get rich quick dudes with US MBAs, but quality of life is pretty decent for a country this far down the demographic curve. We can only really judge how they fared when America enters that demographic slope.

chii 4y ago

> he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake. if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake, and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information.

moonchrome 4y ago
>and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information. That's ridiculous - everyone makes decisions under incomplete information - does that mean we can't be blamed for anything ?
- danuker 4y ago
  Blame - yes. But it was not a mistake - it was the outcome of a deliberate process.
  - troutwine 4y ago
    A deliberate process that leads to an outcome you didn’t intend or want is one of the definitions of a mistake. > an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      Poker players are trained to think a decision was a mistake only if the expected value of the decision was negative, not if the outcome happened to be negative. This is good because it removes the chance component from the outcome when evaluating the quality of the decision making process.
      - troutwine 4y ago
        Whether that’s a good definition or not of ‘mistake’, it’s extremely context specific. Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect.
        hackerlight 4y ago
        It's context independent and can be applied anywhere. It's the maxim of not factoring in good or bad luck when evaluating the quality of a decision that's made under incomplete information (such as not being able to see the future). Simple and sensible. > Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect. Fair enough. I was commenting in the abstract, I have no view on Abenomics.
        moonchrome 4y ago
        >Simple and sensible. No, it only works in artificial environments where you get to sample a bunch of outcomes under the same decisions, with a known fixed probability distribution, to work out to an overall net positive. Economic policy is anything but this, a wrong decision can have catastrophic events where you don't get to make more than one decision, probability distribution is extremely complex and ever changing, and you need to account for that. You definitely don't want to apply artificial game logic.
        hackerlight 4y ago
danuker 4y ago
Good point. Still, I'd argue that changing a nationwide taxation system based on incomplete information is reckless (depending on incompleteness). They could have tried it in a small area beforehand, instead.
lostlogin 4y ago
That isn’t how you defines a mistake. To flip the logic, if you know something is a bad idea and do it anyway that’s not a mistake either, it’s intentional.
eCa 4y ago
> if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake Mistakes are by definition only known to be mistakes after the fact. If you know before you do something that it’s going to fail then it is not a mistake.

oars 4y ago

Look at the price of Yen to USD. Japan's economy is in shambles.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> Look at the price of Yen to USD. The instantaneous exchange rate between two currencies does not give any information about the strength or weakness of the economies that operate on those currencies.
fulafel 4y ago
Interest rate hikes enacted to fight inflation also raise a currency in the forex markets. (Because holding said currency gives you relatively better yield vs before the hike.) A currency is a tool of the economy controllable by a central bank, not a competition (otherwise everyone would d shoot for high deflation).

pletnes 4y ago

You don’t even know that any other policy would be better, because we can’t rewind and retry. And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy." But the economy is a very basic, essential thing. If it is bad, things are indeed bad for many people, which counts more to them than the great politic. Johnson would not have to worry about anything, if the UK's economy would be running smoothly. Which it does not and the brexit is basically still unsolved and a great feeling of insecurity remains. This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals. He resigned yesterday, he's been brought down. But it wasn't really the economy, I think, as much as people harbouring hopes of being PM getting sick of being made to look idiots by his constantly changing stories.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    He's still Prime Minister until he's replaced. Which is probably inevitable, but like in all horror movies you need to make sure the monster is actually dead before your relax.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  > This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals. I can't tell if you aren't aware he resigned or if your meaning here is that you figure Johnson will stand, be re-elected by his MPs and then pretend everything is back to normal, presumably while continuing to leak MPs to both by-election defeats and defections. I wouldn't put it past Boris to attempt such a thing, but my guess is that it would be humiliating. There are dozens of MPs who'd back Boris in the hope of some reward, but far more see this as a useless cause and want to be first in line for a ministerial job under one of his rivals who might survive a general election.

shapefrog 4y ago

On the flip side the people are very well educated, good healthcare, ultra low unemployment, ultra low poverty, and happy. There is more to life than trying to get the made up number that is GDP to print a positive number every quarter.

u10 4y ago
I wouldn't describe Japan as a "happy" country.
- nxm 4y ago
  Perhaps people in Japan are more reserved, but that doesn’t mean they’re not happy.
- bouncycastle 4y ago
  Happiness is not just an economic thing. It's also culture, and that takes generations to fix. From an economic standpoint, Japan has a high standard of living. Good medical system, plentiful and cheap food, affordable housing, quality education, few crime and an endless amount of job vacancies. On the other hand... the air quality has been awful this year..but you cannot have everything perfect in any country.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rendall 4y ago
> ...and happy. Japan sits 62nd out of 153 in the 2020 World Happiness Report at a score of 5.871 (range 7.809-2.567, normalizes to 0.63) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2020_re... Happier than average, but that average includes countries wracked by war, poverty and corruption. Edit: the 2022 World Happiness Report ranks Japan at 54th out of 146 with a score of 6.039 normalized to 0.67, an improvement, and is now comparable to Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Honduras. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-and-trust-during-covid-19-and-beyond/#ranking-of-happiness-2019-2021 https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-...

cstross 4y ago

Note that Japan is in a savage demographic crunch, with a TFR well below replacement and an ageing population, which means the ratio of workers to dependents (the elderly) is dropping. Which in turn reduces average productivity and GDP. Actual population decline is deflationary and Japan's been in that situation since the start of the 1990s. This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).

Shadonototra 4y ago
demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
danuker 4y ago
> and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  They could probably attract millions of Westerners tomorrow if they really wanted. Whether or not that's a good idea / they'd like the influx is another question. But, they could do it without changing anything except their insanely difficult immigration schemes.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Abe did that. It's very easy to immigrate to Japan. The reason this succeeded is that nobody in the country noticed, which is why you don't know about it. It's not that attractive to Westerners if only because wages are low so you can't pay off those student loans. (Immigrate as in get into the country on a work visa, not as in get permanent residency - that's doable on a "highly skilled professional" visa though.)

octodog 4y ago

Those numbers are wildly misleading. The Q2 2014 GDP drop was 1.7% but this is largely because consumers brought forward consumption of big ticket items to Q1 - where the economy grew by 0.8%. The economy ACTUALLY only shrank by 0.1% in 2014 but then grew by 0.4%,0.2%,0.5% the following three years, which is actually a lot for Japan.

icelancer 4y ago

Abenomics was not likely a good idea at the time nor in retrospect, but a lot of the GDP contraction has less to do with monetary policy and far more to do with cultural/social policies that the population embraces - government-sanctioned or not. Very low birth replacement rates, very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale, Sony et al being beaten by Intel to the correct Silicon Valley model, and so forth all contribute to contracting GDP quite a bit. EDIT: This is not to say I think Japan has the wrong idea or whatever; I agree that chasing GDP is not some end-all be-all thing. I'm just saying that while I don't regard Abe as a genius economist, I don't think it's too fair he get a ton of blame either given that his country's demographics, social model, and other factors likely contributed far more towards the inertia of a shrinking economy.

chaostheory 4y ago
> very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale These are all things that Abe’s government and policies strongly supported.

patrec 4y ago

> The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics": I don't think you get assassinated for economic policies (unless you really impoverish a large section of the population). I think it's more likely he got assassinated for some fairly random loony reason by someone unhinged or for his non-economy related right wing policies (e.g. on defense and foreign policy).

strogonoff 4y ago

It is a common pitfall to attribute both the good stuff and the bad stuff to whoever is in power at the time. We like to forget that success and failure are to large extent dependent on current context (economical, societal and so on). This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something! Improving %metric% thanks to general development and despite the dictator in power is very much a thing, just as declining %metric% could have been the best possible outcome.

philliphaydon 4y ago
> This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something! We /assume/ they have popular support, in reality we don't really know.
- strogonoff 4y ago
  It’s true that in one case there’s no elections and in the other case the elections are most likely rigged, so it’s hard to know for sure. I base this on discussions I had with people from both countries (numerous in real life, as well as some online, including here), there are enough anecdata points for me to form this opinion.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I just moved to Taiwan after spending 10 years living in Singapore. I've not met a single person from China in Singapore who liked the CCP. I can't comment on Russia because I honestly don't think I've met anyone in person from Russia. I wouldn't take online as an indication of anything tho as people from China always say in person they would never admit out loud because they fear for their family.
    - FooBarWidget 4y ago
      I'm Chinese and I'll have to disagree with the idea that Chinese "fear speaking up". That is a stereotype. China isn't that sort of place. There are 500 protests a day — not to overthrow the government, but to ask them to do better or to address grievances. Criticisms are all over the place if you look online. Most likely you were just in a community with people who are unhappy about China. I live in Netherlands and most Chinese here (specifically: those who came from the mainland) are supportive of China. Those from Taiwan or who were born here are a mixed bag.

jeeeb 4y ago

You’re looking at nominal GDP measured in USD over a period when the value of the yen fell significantly relative to the USD. If you look at the trend you can clearly see the nominal GDP fell back down to trend after a massive spike during the high yen period post-GFC. I lived in Japan most of that period and no one thought of it as a recession. Unemployment fell to essentially zero, the stock market boomed, the lower yen was welcomed and ultimately “real” (PPP) GDP rose. There’s a reason Abe was able to serve as PM for so long in a country otherwise notorious for cycling switching leaders.

yucky 4y ago

>So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami. That's an odd take considering Japan's economy has been contracting for 25 years. Can you be specific on how his economic contractions was different than those those before (or after) him?

Zerverus 4y ago

Japan is much more complicated than that and apply capitalist measures of success isnt doing it justice - Demographic crunch, as mentioned. The country not descending into uncontrolled decline may already been a decent achievement - Focus on quality. This is unique to Japan and runs counter capitalist growth stories. Japanese consumers value quality. a lot. But it’s bad for business in the growth sense, you don’t need to buy a new fridge for 10-15 years because it works and isn’t made obsolete artificially, Japanese consumers are happy, growth : consumption metrics are not. Quality is just not captured as a variable in the western / American way of looking at economic health. Not having train delays, having great customer service, no forced obsolete products, high reliability in services and products are not reflected / incentivized in that model - they don’t exist but that’s not how Japan works. Japan has issues, quite a few, but it’s not nearly the hellhole American economic publications love to make it out for decades now. It may be a nightmare scenarios for the get rich quick dudes with US MBAs, but quality of life is pretty decent for a country this far down the demographic curve. We can only really judge how they fared when America enters that demographic slope.