What happened to the Japanese economic miracle?

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.

restlessfox5 said: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.

The Japanese work ethic is truly formidable; they are quite remarkable people. They will maintain their dominance even through the most grueling periods because they operate with a collective mindset that functions like a single, highly sophisticated, and efficient machine. A truly unique nation.

All that military hardware doesn't say a damn thing about how the average person actually lives.

I haven't even been told that...

But isn't it obvious they seem to be on an upward trajectory?

After the Berlin Wall came down, the Japanese were basically aiming to be the biggest players in Eastern Europe—trying to become the ultimate power brokers of the region. And honestly? They probably could have pulled it off. If they’d actually managed to pull it together back then, the 90s wouldn't have been such a total wash for them... but of course, there’s always someone like Mr. Rumsfeld showing up around '89 to explain why letting the 90s go down the drain was actually the better move 😁

Jeremy Wilson3 said:Look, growth isn't infinite. Japan's GDP per capita is top-tier globally, but they've hit a ceiling. They just can't sustain this pace indefinitely.

Now they’re facing a different beast—an aging population. It feels like Japan is slowly turning into one massive retirement community. That’s what happens when you overwork everyone; people are so caught up in the grind that there's zero time left for anything else, let alone starting a family.

It's entirely possible that in thirty years, we'll be asking the same thing about the Chinese miracle. Everyone keeps shouting that the Chinese will take over the world, but we'll see if that actually pans out.

But could there not be a solution to this crisis? What if they were to import young Chinese women who are in their prime reproductive years? After all, in the global landscape, a child's nationality is almost always determined by the father rather than the mother, isn't it?

Who knows how many Chinese women might find themselves pregnant for a third time, only to be restricted by state laws that prevent them from having more than two children!

If such women were brought directly to Japan along with all their children, wouldn't we see a massive demographic boom?

Japan is basically on par with Germany or France when you look at GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...PP_per_capita, and their HDI is through the roof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...elopment_Index. They’re still doing incredibly well.

Nicole Barrett76 said:But could there not be a solution to this crisis? What if they were to import young Chinese women who are in their prime reproductive years? After all, in the global landscape, a child's nationality is almost always determined by the father rather than the mother, isn't it?

Who knows how many Chinese women might find themselves pregnant for a third time, only to be restricted by state laws that prevent them from having more than two children!

If such women were brought directly to Japan along with all their children, wouldn't we see a massive demographic boom?

Please, don't even think about raising Chinese kids to be Japanese.🙂

Japanese men love Chinese people just as much as we do, if not more...

restlessfox5 said: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...

😁

That’s exactly how people viewed Japan during the fifties and sixties. We'll see where China stands in twenty years. 😉 Their trajectory is solid—they're churning out seven times more engineers every single year than the USA does, and lately, they've been aggressively recruiting top-tier scientists from abroad. They already have three universities sitting in the global top fifty, whereas a decade ago, they didn't have a single one on the list. In ten years? Expect one or two in the top 10 and maybe forty in the top 100—mark my words. 😉

granitepilot2 said:😁

That’s exactly how people viewed Japan during the fifties and sixties. We'll see where China stands in twenty years. 😉 Their trajectory is solid—they're churning out seven times more engineers every single year than the USA does, and lately, they've been aggressively recruiting top-tier scientists from abroad. They already have three universities sitting in the global top fifty, whereas a decade ago, they didn't have a single one on the list. In ten years? Expect one or two in the top 10 and maybe forty in the top 100—mark my words. 😉

For China to make their next big leap, they’re going to need some serious political reform. You can't expect massive numbers of highly educated people to thrive under a bloated, dictatorial bureaucracy built on questionable ideological foundations.

Can someone break down the Israeli economic miracle for me?
It’s a nation in the desert, fighting wars for 60 years, surrounded by enemies, while pouring massive amounts of capital into defense and maintaining a huge standing military.
How does an economy actually sustain that kind of pressure?

fadedgardener15 said:Capitalism isn't built for the long haul. It basically just burns through human resources until it either finds a new way to grow or hits a wall. If it can't find fresh resources, it just stalls out, and that's usually when civil liberties start taking a hit.

Total bullshit.

The Japanese had this massive credit-driven boom, a huge property bubble, and they basically overleveraged themselves to build infrastructure that—if I'm being honest—often didn't even make commercial sense. I mean, the Wall Street Journal reported back when the index hit 30,000 (it’s sitting around 8,000 now) that there were rumors the land right in front of the Imperial Palace in New York City was worth more than all of California combined. People were taking out two-generation mortgages that lasted up to 80 years! When that bubble finally popped, much like what we're seeing in the West today, Japanese banks were left holding a mountain of toxic assets on their balance sheets. But here's the thing... the Japanese didn't cut losses the way Americans do today (I mean, seriously, who has ever even heard of a Japanese Lehman Brothers or WaMu?). Because they didn't, those banks just sat there as zombie institutions for ages. They never really cleaned up their banking system. I guess you could say the problem in Japan is cultural—there's just not enough raw capitalism at play. They don't liquidate overcapacity or failing companies the way they do in Anglo-Saxon capitalism, so the corrections just drag on forever and hurt a lot more.

rowdyraven2 said:Can someone break down the Israeli economic miracle for me?
It’s a nation in the desert, fighting wars for 60 years, surrounded by enemies, while pouring massive amounts of capital into defense and maintaining a huge standing military.
How does an economy actually sustain that kind of pressure?

The US keeps pumping money into them.

restlesstiger47 said:The US keeps pumping money into them.

Nonsense. I mean, seriously. US aid to Israel is about $3 billion a year, and most of that isn't even actual cash—it's military hardware, training, and stuff like that. Plus, if you look at the numbers, Israel's GDP per capita is around $31,000. So, even if you stripped away 2% of that US aid, we're still looking at a gross product of roughly $29,500 per person. It's just math, really.