Or, well, you might. How do you feel about living to 107?
Oh no, Japan is running out of people!
That’s what Robert Samuelson tells us in his latest column (Washington Post, 6/12/19). That might seem a strange concern for a country that is ten times as densely populated as the United States, but Samuelson apparently sees it as a real nightmare.
After all, if its population keeps shrinking, Japan will face a severe labor shortage. They may have a hard time getting people to fill lower-paying, lower-productivity jobs. For example, it might be hard to find workers to shove people onto Toyko’s overcrowded subways.
But it gets worse. As a result of the social services required by the elderly, Japan has been running large deficits and built up an enormous debt:
The mounting deficit spending has in turn ballooned Japan’s government debt to 226 percent of GDP—”the highest ever recorded in the OECD area” and roughly twice the US level.
Yes, and the burden of this debt is absolutely crushing to the Japanese people. According to the IMF, Japan’s debt service burden will be equal to 0.1 percent of GDP this year, which is equal to roughly $20 billion in the US economy. And if the country continues on its current course, its debt service burden will turn negative in two years.
The issue here is that Japan has negative (nominal) interest rates. Lenders pay the Japanese government to borrow their money. As a result, the interest burden on Japan’s “highest ever recorded” debt is no burden whatsoever.
But wait, it gets worse. Samuelson tells us (citing economist Timothy Taylor):
Half of Japanese children born in 2007 are expected to live to 107.
As we can see, the situation in Japan is pretty bad. Samuelson warns us that it could be our future, too, which I suppose might be possible if we fix our healthcare system.
Samuelson and his clique really need to do a better job of finding a bogeyman.
A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (6/12/19). Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Is capitalism a pyramid scheme?
looks like it
Capitalism is not a pyramid scheme. But a pyramid scheme is capitalism. Capitalism is at heart, the monopolization of market resources, otherwise known as ‘leverage’. Pyramid schemes are the simplest expression of an attempt to acquire ‘leverage’ in a marketplace. In much the same way that a criminal with a stolen gun, mugging a pedestrian on the street is the simplest & most basic example of capitalism at work – you build infrastructure with the least cost to yourself, establish a position of dominance in an area with the greatest odds of profitability
A much more sophisticated example of a street mugger, for example: secure permanent access to free water, repackage the water as a marketable product with a minimum of added costs, such as Budweiser beer. Convince as many people as possible that your water is better than any craft beer out there by advertising the value of the water. When your water is seen as worth a lot of money, sell it. This ‘pyramid’ has inscribed on it’s base ‘buy low, sell high’
‘Oh the humanity!’
But yes, I recall some of the ‘concerned humanitarians’ like Samuelson trying to scare people with a similar tactic regarding European countries and even a South American country whose population was stabilized or slowly declining. They were oh-so concerned that their economy wouldn’t grow without increasing demand from an increasing population. Talk about ideological short-sightedness. People apparently have to keep breeding and buying more-and-more (in spite of all the associated problems with doing that) to support the economic system that these advisors advocate, rather than society modifying the economic system, which after-all IS a human construct and NOT some immutable physical law of nature.
they don’t seem to realize that that growing economy depends on more consumption more people to consume or people consuming more what is impossible with declining wages and growing unemployment and of course the depletion of the resources of planet earth
Exactly! Additionally, there’s also the WASTE that’s generated and accumulates in one form or another, in one place or another. Also, the ‘quality of life’ issues that DB alluded to regarding the Japanese subway shovers…. do most of us want to live in concrete & steel ‘cages’ in densely packed cities, just so we can support a libertarian economic system?
Point taken, but please understand that Japan too is suffering from a neoliberal economy where increasingly people work part-time and do not accrue national pension unless they pay the full premium that would normally be covered for at least 50 percent of the premium (also includes a version of nationalized health care entitling one to an out of pocket cost of 30 percent). They will have to cover the premiums themselves, which many can’t afford to do. Poverty is increasing at a pace with the declining social safety net.
As such the growing underclass will not be able to live independently until a natural death. In fact, the deputy prime minister, suggests it us a waste to keep old people hooked up to machines as is increasingly common. Of course he is of the Scrooge mentality and thinks they should “die and decrease the surplus population” as Dickens wrote. But that is the dark reality in neoliberal Japan where the govt wants to wash its hands of the social safety net.
Climbing consumption taxes do NOT pay for health and welfare but they do go to fund the militarism which both the US demands for maintaining its war making bases in Okinawa especially and which a virtual fascist PM wants in order to join the ranks of so called “normal nations” by discarding the universally respecting war renouncing constitutuon.
It is ok to call out Samuelson for his nonsense, but please do not fo it at the expense of the suffering victims of Japanese capitalism. Suicide as well as domestic abuse us also increasing.
Please research Japan before making iffy comparisons. Japan is no example of a healthy, people oriented society.
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