Posts by restlessfox5

I remember catching the first one in theaters when it first dropped—man, it was killer. Not just because it was a great movie, but because I could actually get lost in the story. I was just a teenager back then, barely a few months out of high school...
I caught the sequel on TV a couple of years later, but for some reason, I just couldn't get into it. As for the third one? Never even bothered.
PS.
It also felt pretty lame that they didn't even bring back the lead from the first movie in the second one—they just gave him a quick shout-out and called it a day...

Aaron Rogers9 said:Back in the 80s, the central bank in Japan implemented massive monetary expansion—essentially keeping interest rates low and printing money—to prevent the yen from getting too strong against the dollar and to artificially boost their exports without much actual necessity.

As with any period of monetary expansion, this created asset bubbles. Stock prices and real estate values shot up to unrealistic levels, and companies took on way too much debt. These bubbles were bound to burst sooner or later, which is exactly what happened in the early 1990s.

Now, you might think the government would have learned its lesson and moved on, but that wasn't quite the case.
Following the classic Keynesian tradition of heavy state intervention, they decided to "fix" the economy through massive stimulus packages.
To put it simply, it resulted in a mountain of useless government spending (there's even a joke about how much of the Japanese coastline has been covered in concrete since then), enormous national debt, artificially propping up failing banks and corporations, and essentially gambling on a recovery that wouldn't come.
(It reminds me somewhat of what Obama is doing currently...)

So yes, we had the lost decade in the 90s, and things aren't looking much better now.

When you factor in a rapidly aging population on top of everything else, well, it's just tough luck. ☕

Don't forget about robotics. You can't overlook how far ahead the Japanese are in this field. And I’m not talking about sci-fi androids or anything crazy like that—just the reality that automated systems are already handling, and in some places even dominating, tons of tasks that used to require a full crew of people.

Brenda Ross47 said:The Japanese kicked off the Meiji restoration back in 1866, whereas the Chinese didn't even start their reforms until a hundred years later...

Honestly, you really only need to look at everything from 1945 onwards, since Japan basically had to rebuild from scratch after the war.

Like I was saying earlier about movies—think about "Blade Runner"—where the main guy is walking through the streets and he's surrounded by these massive screens flashing ads in Japanese... that vibe was spot on for when Ford became a massive seller in the 80s, when Japanese companies were buying up American brands and expanding all over the USA. Back then, Japan was just crushing it with tech, from video games to robotics, so Americans definitely felt the heat in that economic showdown.
China, on the other hand, builds its economic muscle on cheap labor and low-cost—often pretty low-quality—products. It’s just not really an apples-to-apples comparison...

Man, when I was a kid, I remember hearing nonstop about how Japan was this unstoppable economic powerhouse. I clearly recall watching all those 80s and early 90s American movies and shows where everyone seemed terrified that Japan was gonna totally outpace the US economy. Then, just like that—poof—that whole vibe basically evaporated.
Plus, I've come across that "lost decade" thing mentioned a few times regarding Japan's economy.
Nowadays, when people talk about massive economic surges, it’s always about China or India, but nobody really mentions Japan anymore. So, if anyone actually knows what went down there, fill me in.

Total high school flick with third-rate actors