> Japan's economy hasn't meaningfully grown in three decades, despite robust productivity growth, likely because of unfavorable demographic shifts. This is mea

> Japan's economy hasn't meaningfully grown in three decades, despite robust productivity growth, likely because of unfavorable demographic shifts. This is meaningless. So what? The part of economic growth that comes from population growth isn't valuable, it basically cancels out on the most important measure which is per-capita outcomes. GDP growth is only really important as far as it is tracking meaningful per-capita changes. Otherwise it would be a reasonable indicator of who has more people but that isn't interesting except, maybe, in a war. Which we don't want. Japan might or might not have terrible problems, but insofar as demographics aren't driving growth that isn't a problem. The problem is if productivity growth has stalled or there aren't enough resources to look after all the unproductive old people.