tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post2831370517123360031..comments2023-10-09T00:45:55.603+09:00Comments on Shisaku: Signs of the Apocalypse #4MTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04626942240117432624noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-7558294814368473612013-01-26T04:14:16.170+09:002013-01-26T04:14:16.170+09:00fwiw, I collected the age 25-54 population trends ...fwiw, I collected the age 25-54 population trends for US & Japan.<br /><br />The Japan data is just my own work of finding live births by year and projecting current rates into the future.<br /><br />The US data is a combination of FRED data and census projection by age ("2008 National Population Projections") for 2013-onward.<br /><br /><a href="http://i.imgur.com/xoadEx7.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/xoadEx7.png</a><br /><br />There's observations to be made from that simple chart. Foremost I think is how small Japan's postwar boom was compared to the US.<br /><br />And also how the US is going to be adding more people as the baby boom echo hits 30.<br /><br />Both economies are going to need to pivot to meet new realities. The simple solution would be for Japan to expand their JET program into more fields, LOL -- from 2012-2020 the US 25-54 segment is going to grow by 2.5M people and Japan's is going to fall by 3.0M.<br /><br />Troynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-32417161283757510612013-01-25T14:32:00.139+09:002013-01-25T14:32:00.139+09:00Abe’s LDP spent almost 20 years building bridges, ...<i>Abe’s LDP spent almost 20 years building bridges, roads, tunnels, dams and airports to nowhere</i><br /><br />I rode my bike a lot around Tokyo, and being under those massive steel viaducts, it hit me that that use of steel was a lot more economic than Japan Inc's previous investment of the material in battleships!<br /><br />Per that MOF PDF I linked to previously, we can see that Japan's stimulus in construction wasn't half the per-capita burden of the US's parallel investment in our war machine.<br /><br />While it's arguable how much bang for the buck the construction bonds got, the fact is that there is a lot of infrastructure on the ground, and, more importantly, people gainfully employed, thanks to the pork spending.<br /><br /><i>No economist could formulate a credible list of every shot of stimulus and every dose of monetary steroids that officials have pumped into the economy since the early 1990s</i><br /><br />This is the wording of a person who doesn't know what he's talking about I think.<br /><br />The early 1990s featured the utter collapse and destruction of one helluva bubble blowoff, a cross-default catastrophe as large as the Great Depression in its destructive power to Japan's financial system.<br /><br />And while I don't know much either, I do know that it took 6-7 years for Japan to BEGIN to deficit-spend in a serious way.<br /><br />But through this the BOJ was relatively tight with monetary easing. I think we can know this by simply tracing the yen's rise from its momentary weakness of ~130 during the dotcom recession all the way up into the 70s not too long ago.<br /><br /><i>Aside from a weaker yen, does he have a plan to make Japan more competitive to take on China</i><br /><br />"Aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?"<br /><br /><i>This faith that Japan is just one huge spending package away from bliss</i><br /><br />The euphoria comes from the change of plan. So goes austerity. I wonder what's going to happen to the 8 & 10% tax rise.<br /><br />At any rate, people complaining about Japan's public debt need to find the beam in their own eyes:<br /><br /><a href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDODNS" rel="nofollow">http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDODNS</a><br /><br />After all, it's the US of A that owes the gov't of Japan $1.1T+, not the other way around.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Troynoreply@blogger.com