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What blows my mind is that Japan's GDP per capita (PPP) as reported by World Bank is now lower than 4 formerly comparatively "poor" former Easter Block countrie

What blows my mind is that Japan's GDP per capita (PPP) as reported by World Bank is now lower than 4 formerly comparatively "poor" former Easter Block countries: Czechia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia. And just one place above Poland. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true&year_high_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_... WTF happened in Japan? All the above countries have their own demographic collapse as well BTW.

_Tev 3y ago
Czechia did not have demographic collapse, and actually got fair bit of immigration from other Slavic countries, mainly Slovakia & Ukraine (pre-war, post we got even more obviously).
akaij 3y ago
Maybe what we should question is the relevance and importance of such metrics.
- extasia 3y ago
  I strongly dislike arguments like this. Because you can apply them to basically any metric and I find that they are generally used to cheaply discredit a potentially interesting fact about the world without actually providing an argument that the metric in question is not a useful one to consider. In all other contexts would you also say gdp per capita is a metric not worth considering? If not then I humbly question the value of your statement. (edited)
  - akaij 3y ago
    I'm not trying to discredit GDP; I don't think it is a useless metric. Lawmakers around the world—some that are paid handsomely—care about it and obviously quite a bit can be inferred from it, but in this case we would be better served utilising a multi-dimensional lens, so to say, in these tangential topics. I'm just against hearing about it as the most important economic metric of a country. It's very often used as a single data point to come to all kinds of conclusions. There are some top-comments in this thread where people are almost forecasting Japan's doom, which is of course a ridiculous view. That's the general direction my comment was aimed at. At the risk of being out of my depth: You only need a few seconds to look at the per-capita list before finding yourself asking "wait, why is THAT country so high up?". Again, useful info can be inferred, but it doesn't put the country above others in other important lists, which is what people usually imply and use it for, on topics not strictly related to economy statistics.
    - extasia 3y ago
      Thanks for clarifying, that's definitely a more well thought through perspective than I gave you credit for before. I guess I would avoid updating my beliefs too strongly when a measurement I generally find quite useful (in this case gdp per capita) does not perfectly map onto a more nuanced view of the world! As you say, it's only a single data point.
Detrytus 3y ago
What happened? Simple: Eastern Europe has been experiencing constant GDP growth for the past 3 decades, while Japan stagnated. Also, regarding sibling comment about relevance of PPP metrics: I challenge you to come to Czechia or Poland - the quality of life can really surprise you. Those are, for example, the two countries with the lowest unemployment rates in EU. We have nice apartments and houses (with photovoltaic panels and heat pumps, mind you), drive nice cars, have good healthcare and free higher education. Unless I get a $1M+ per year offer from a FAANG in Silicon Valley I feel like no country in the world can offer me a significantly better standard of living.
somenameforme 3y ago
The typical explanation given is poor economic policy - good times led banks to start lending excessively, excessive lending drove speculation, speculation drove bubbles, those bubbles burst, everything collapsed, and they just never managed to get back up again. But that last part is what most interests me. Most of the Soviet Bloc type nations you named had reasonable fertility rates under the USSR, only collapsed once the USSR collapsed in 1991, and are inching back up again. Japan, by contrast, never had a particularly great fertility rate post-war. Then it just collapsed in the 1970s and simply kept going down. [1] Fertility rates just determine so much. With a good fertility rate companies grow naturally because their market size is constantly naturally increasing. And vice versa for poor fertility rates. It also determines the overall age distribution of a population, such as how in Japan now 10% of the population is over 80. When an ever larger chunk of your population is leaving the labor force with not enough people to replace them, and then an even smaller taxpayer base to provide the social benefits necessary to sustain these people in their elder years - everything just becomes completely unsustainable. And, again, none of this will ever get better such as, for instance, when the older people start passing en masse. This is because fertility rate determines the ratio of distributions within a population. You can see this quite clearly in this [2] population pyramid. The only solution is for them to suddenly start dramatically increasing their fertility rate. [1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

_Tev 3y ago

Czechia did not have demographic collapse, and actually got fair bit of immigration from other Slavic countries, mainly Slovakia & Ukraine (pre-war, post we got even more obviously).

akaij 3y ago

Maybe what we should question is the relevance and importance of such metrics.

extasia 3y ago
I strongly dislike arguments like this. Because you can apply them to basically any metric and I find that they are generally used to cheaply discredit a potentially interesting fact about the world without actually providing an argument that the metric in question is not a useful one to consider. In all other contexts would you also say gdp per capita is a metric not worth considering? If not then I humbly question the value of your statement. (edited)
- akaij 3y ago
  I'm not trying to discredit GDP; I don't think it is a useless metric. Lawmakers around the world—some that are paid handsomely—care about it and obviously quite a bit can be inferred from it, but in this case we would be better served utilising a multi-dimensional lens, so to say, in these tangential topics. I'm just against hearing about it as the most important economic metric of a country. It's very often used as a single data point to come to all kinds of conclusions. There are some top-comments in this thread where people are almost forecasting Japan's doom, which is of course a ridiculous view. That's the general direction my comment was aimed at. At the risk of being out of my depth: You only need a few seconds to look at the per-capita list before finding yourself asking "wait, why is THAT country so high up?". Again, useful info can be inferred, but it doesn't put the country above others in other important lists, which is what people usually imply and use it for, on topics not strictly related to economy statistics.
  - extasia 3y ago
    Thanks for clarifying, that's definitely a more well thought through perspective than I gave you credit for before. I guess I would avoid updating my beliefs too strongly when a measurement I generally find quite useful (in this case gdp per capita) does not perfectly map onto a more nuanced view of the world! As you say, it's only a single data point.

Detrytus 3y ago

What happened? Simple: Eastern Europe has been experiencing constant GDP growth for the past 3 decades, while Japan stagnated. Also, regarding sibling comment about relevance of PPP metrics: I challenge you to come to Czechia or Poland - the quality of life can really surprise you. Those are, for example, the two countries with the lowest unemployment rates in EU. We have nice apartments and houses (with photovoltaic panels and heat pumps, mind you), drive nice cars, have good healthcare and free higher education. Unless I get a $1M+ per year offer from a FAANG in Silicon Valley I feel like no country in the world can offer me a significantly better standard of living.

somenameforme 3y ago

The typical explanation given is poor economic policy - good times led banks to start lending excessively, excessive lending drove speculation, speculation drove bubbles, those bubbles burst, everything collapsed, and they just never managed to get back up again. But that last part is what most interests me. Most of the Soviet Bloc type nations you named had reasonable fertility rates under the USSR, only collapsed once the USSR collapsed in 1991, and are inching back up again. Japan, by contrast, never had a particularly great fertility rate post-war. Then it just collapsed in the 1970s and simply kept going down. [1] Fertility rates just determine so much. With a good fertility rate companies grow naturally because their market size is constantly naturally increasing. And vice versa for poor fertility rates. It also determines the overall age distribution of a population, such as how in Japan now 10% of the population is over 80. When an ever larger chunk of your population is leaving the labor force with not enough people to replace them, and then an even smaller taxpayer base to provide the social benefits necessary to sustain these people in their elder years - everything just becomes completely unsustainable. And, again, none of this will ever get better such as, for instance, when the older people start passing en masse. This is because fertility rate determines the ratio of distributions within a population. You can see this quite clearly in this [2] population pyramid. The only solution is for them to suddenly start dramatically increasing their fertility rate. [1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=JP https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...