A friend said the other day that a lot of economists were worried that the U.S. was becoming like Japan in the 1990s, with burst stock market and real estate bubbles and slow growth despite near-zero interest rates. I replied “Yes, we could be just like Japan, but without the obsession with quality, reverence for craftmanship, strong work ethic, high achievement in math and science, and low crime rate.”
10 thoughts on “Any danger of the U.S. becoming like Japan?”
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Ok, fair enough and well said, but to put some in our column: we don’t (yet) have the oppressive government regulation of Japan, nor (yet) as badly managed a banking system as they had, nor the cultural phenomenon of keiretsu that often led them to persist with poor investment decisions and constrained their flexibility. I’d argue that we have a vastly different economy than they do. Maybe worse, in some ways, but in other ways we are more adaptable than they are, or at least were.
Not that I’m not nervous… Over the past year I’ve sold virtually every stock I own.
Japan suffered from deflation during the 90s. We’re suffering from inflation.
Low crime rate? Japan has the oldest population in the world. And it’s getting older
and smaller. It doesn’t bode well.
Given that we’re looking at electing a personable far-left democrat in what look like stag-flationary times, we’ve imported a sometimes angry mass of restive workers that don’t seem to desire the acquisition of an American identity, and the government is stocking up on helicopter transports for VIP’s, I wonder if it doesn’t look like this place will become more like Latin America than Japan. Didn’t you say that everybody with money or power down there rides from enclave to enclave in helicopters? If we’re facing a replay of the 1970’s, I suppose we’ll see a resurgence of terror and kidnapping. (In the news, they just released an ex-symbionese liberation army terrorist from prison..) How’s Switzerland this time of year, I wonder?
Yes, Japan, that bastion of technical innovation, leader in women rights and innovator in business hierarchy that encourages individual growth resulting in rich individual entrepreneurs, NOT.
One interesting difference between Japan and the USA is that in Japan, for a variety of cultural reasons, being unemployed or not working is seen as a major source of shame both for the individual man and his family. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.
As a red-blooded American, I am shocked at your post — you forgot to mention our complete inability to save money, which will make our recession bigger and badder than anything in pansy Japan, where they barely use credit cards, much less leverage themselves to the edge of bankruptcy.
Japan lets the unemployed die in the streets except they have the good manners to die out of sight. They don’t spend 400 billion a year on a meddlesome military. What’s wrong with these people? They used to be big time in meddlesome military.
Japan’s financial minister yesterday advised that US “public fund injection” into the financial sector was unavoidable. Saying how difficult it was to “convey such a message to a foreign government” he said that the US should heed “Japan’s lesson”.
Source: (Financial Times)
I’m willing to bet they don’t spend $129 billion a month on entitlements and social programs either.
dogbert: After WWII, some other countries didn’t like the idea of them having a military, for some strange reason. Today, technically, they don’t — they have a Self-Defense Force composed of civilians.