Posted on 02/23/2013 6:41:19 PM PST by kanooga
After more than twenty years of economic troubles, Japan now appears to be entering a terminal phase. They are running out of options as they approach a total economic melt-down.
Since their recession began with the 1990 collapse of the Nikkei stock market, the Japanese government has tried to stimulate their economy with more government spending. Unfortunately, all they have to show for it is massive sovereign debt. The promised economic recovery never happened. They have become Exhibit A in the case against socialism, proving what free market economists have said all along, government spending cannot drive economic growth. That comes from the private sector.
The results in Japan should not come as a surprise. The same results have occurred wherever governments have tried to spend their way out of recession. The United States has made the same mistake repeatedly, including President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930′s, President Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960′s, President Carter’s recession in the 1970′s, and President Obama’s failed stimulus program in 2009, which spent nearly a trillion dollars to get the slowest economic recovery in American history. The evidence is clear, government spending cannot drive economic growth. Progressive politicians, otherwise known as socialists and communists, don’t like to hear that, but that does not change the facts.
(Excerpt) Read more at z3news.com ...
And one more thing...China has no foreign debt! On the contrary China owns Trillions of surplus foreign currency. This is in stark contrast with Japan which has national debt exceeding 200% of their GDP.
“Keep on dreaming. Just in last 25 years, China has created 150 NEW Billionaires and ONE MILLION NEW millionaires. Naked capitalism is obviously thriving in China. Sure the system is autocratic. But that keeps crime rates near zero.”
Go to bed, Jim Rogers.
Also China is hardly a paradise of free market capitalism; the state still controls considerable portions of the economy and in fact centralization has increased under Hu Jintao.
“Japan has a good reason to die-off.
Japan’s effective growth since WWII was all based on industrial production exports so it’s fate was sealed as early as earlier 70s as US got laid with Red China for some strategic Cold War reasons.”
This is, interestingly enough, very similar to the US in the 50s-60s. We had 25 glorious years of prosperity by virtue of having destroyed all our manufacturing competition in the war. And once Europe and Japan rebuilt, it was game over for America as the manufacturing leader of the world.
It is also true that Japan has little apparent desire for US troops to ever depart and for them to be militarily self-sufficient because (as someone else said) they don’t have enough young people to man an army anymore. This is not like in WWII times when Japan was a youthful country where only 3% of the population was over 65 and they had tons of 18 yo bodies to throw around.
That is an interesting graphic. Too bad that here in the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, no one looks forward or back more than about 5 years. On a good day.
The Answer:
1. Drop Welfare
2. put people to work at Slave Wages.
3. Restart Draft.
4. Rally people and Rebuild Navy.
5. Invade weakest Neighbor—like some Island Nations in Pacific. How about North Korea?
6. Hold lots of Parades, build shrines, make people proud and able warriors. Control Press, take apart internet, put in a secret police. Works every time!
Too late for all of this.
As for slave wage you won’t ever institute it slavish enough to compete with Red China on cheap labor.
And whom are you about to draft? Japanese polls shows their teenagers aren’t manly enough to have sex with girls. Their ideas on firearms and warfare are coming from Call of Duty.
1. Destroy stuff — there are 10 houses, they are destroyed. 1 year later there are 10 houses, but you’ve lost x years of man labor and materials to get back to where you started from. PURE WASTE. If you want to hire people, just have the G hire the unemployed to move a sand pile from here to there and back again.
Dead people — If people die, then there are fewer people to make things which = less productivity. True, there are fewer people demanding things, but that is simpy a wash at best. Among the dead are certainly people who were far more productive than infants. Of course loss of one’s life is the loss of an economic good, even more hurtful than the loss of one’s Cadillac.
My thought as I read the piece was “Who will the Japs attack this time?”
It is fairly early in the morning and I can’t make the computation.
North Korea is the main contender off the cuff.
They don't have to. I would wager that the Chinese have quietly been taking physical possession of whatever gold the U.S. claims it has in Fort Knox.
The surviving American men returning from WW2 thus found abundant jobs at amazing salaries when they returned from the war, which led directly to the glory days of the 50’s (and the unsustainable salaries and benefits unions demanded during that time). Over the next 15 to 20 years, as the rest of the developed world rebuilt their factories (bigger and better than before) and US factories aged it all came crumbling down in the US.
This all has helped obscure the damage socialism has done to the country. MANY people (possibly a majority) truely believe that the New Deal saved the US from the great depression when just the opposite is true. The New Deal caused the great depression (which was only “great” in the US) Most Americans have a very ... Americentic view of the world and don't realize that the great depression wasn't a world wide phenomenon, but simply a small downturn in most of the world, which they recovered from quickly just like any other recession.
As always, government (and it's embrace of socialism) was the problem, and not the solution.
Obama, with his EPA, et al will insure it. Natural resources are of no benefit when they are locked up.
>>>My thought as I read the piece was “Who will the Japs attack this time?”
It is fairly early in the morning and I can’t make the computation.
North Korea is the main contender off the cuff.<<<
Norks are by far more militarily capable.
>>>1. Destroy stuff — there are 10 houses, they are destroyed. 1 year later there are 10 houses, but you’ve lost x years of man labor and materials to get back to where you started from. PURE WASTE. If you want to hire people, just have the G hire the unemployed to move a sand pile from here to there and back again.
Dead people — If people die, then there are fewer people to make things which = less productivity. True, there are fewer people demanding things, but that is simpy a wash at best. Among the dead are certainly people who were far more productive than infants. Of course loss of one’s life is the loss of an economic good, even more hurtful than the loss of one’s Cadillac.<<<
Don’t waste your intelligence to explain. Every sane person understand that Japan is not in a position to run a war economy.
Outstanding Post. Everything you said is true. Too bad most Americans know so little of the facts.
Not only that....but a good chunk of the world, believed that Communism, and centralily planned economies were the way to go, and the US ate their lunch, then they wised up, and unfortunately we seem to be headed in the opposite direction.
“Lester Thurow, MIT moron?”
Yep, I remember him saying that if taxes were raised people would work longer and harder to maintain the same standard of living.
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