[staytrue]

It means american manufacturing had no competitors. It meant we could pay high wages because we had a defacto monopoly on manufacturing. Monopolies can do that. Fact is Japan in a lot of areas can pay higher wages than we do and still make better stuff. Post WWII, they could not do that because their country had been destroyed.

[RLK]

Who in hell filled your head with such ludicrous crap? Woe be unto this country that there are you and people like you.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Fact is Japan in a lot of areas can pay higher wages than we do and still make better stuff."

Fact is in Japan you've got to work three times as long to spend twice as much for stuff that's only half as good as anywhere else. Fact is prices are insanely high in Japan so's that the people subsidize export drives which undercut any chosen foreign industry. Fact is that the good stuff is exported, and the people are stuck with pretty lousy goods for domestic consumption until the chosen foreign market has been taken over by Japanese companies. Fact is that people over there have virtually no choice when it comes to changing employers, spending their money based on value and choice, investing their money, or even getting their money out the banks. Fact is I lived there for ten years, and it's a pretty dreary, crummy, and uncomfortable way to organize a society.