Posted on 12/29/2011 6:25:43 AM PST by Kaslin
A torrent of bad news hit Japan in November. Please consider some details from the Bloomberg article Japan Factory Output Falls on Global Slump
Powder Keg Waiting for a SparkGovernment spending does not 'spur growth'. If it did, Japan would have been the world's growth engine for the past two decades. In reality, every cent the government spends must be taken from the private sector and therefore can no longer be spent or invested by it. We can see what the government's spending achieves (not much) what we cannot see is what would have been achieved had the government left well enough alone and the private sector had saved, spent and invested instead. This is the 'broken window effect' one must not only consider the obvious economic effects of a policy, but also the 'unseen' ones. Government spending is a burden, not a boon.
Like its counterparts in Europe, Japan's government tries to get its house in order not by reducing spending apparently a completely taboo subject in Japan but by raising taxes. This will predictably - just as it does in Europe - double the burden on the economy. Since these tax hikes are immensely unpopular in Japan, it is not necessarily likely that they will happen. Moreover, there may be no more time to take effective countermeasures against the growing debt load: the death spiral may well begin before such measures can be implemented and take effect.
Not only is Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio uncomfortably high, its tax revenues continue to decline precipitously as a percentage of government spending.
click on chart for sharper image
In such a situation, the level of interest rates becomes an ever growing concern. Right now, Japan's interest rates remain among the very lowest in the world. And yet, in spite of near record low interest rates, the percentage of tax revenue the government must spend on interest expenses is increasing fast.
Japan needs a very strong and loyal ally against China.
Something Obama doesn’t want.
One must think back, the Clintons and China?
And guess who may be one step from being POTUS soon?
Bill Clinton becomes head of the UN, Hillary is POTUS.
And suddenly the west coast and Hawaii are owned by China.
Japan is not my enemy, if they need help we should work together, just how much aid has been sent Japan authorized by Obama?
LOL! I expect it would be a much tidier scene than the US version, too.
They make some first class electronics and cars.
You’re right, of course, but kind of the angle I was aiming at...
This whole thing about keeping what I call “value raising” or “value creation” activities onshore could be analyzed by 3 bevys of Harvard economists...one bevy studies the impact on balance of trade. Another studies the impact in terms of worker salaries, as you just suggested, and the third studies the national debt. In six months, you’d have thick reports from them, opining on various things.....
Or, you could bypass all that and with simple, common sense, arrive at a conclusion that if you destroy or dissipate, rather than create value within your borders, you eventually go broke in the form of losing control of the value that you possess. My only point is that it’s on one hand a complex topic, on the other hand, it’s butt simple.
Economics is a joke and has been my whole life time, basically down to magic thinking, “assume we have a can opener.” Paul Krugman and easy money Larry Kudlow should be sentenced to the organic farm for wayward ideologues, and on that farm they can be in charge of humanure dispersal.
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