The myth of Japan's failure

They have had a historically high internal savings rate that allowed this. One thing to keep an eye on is their terrible demographics. I believe Japanese citizens as well as the largest institutional buyers (Japan Post etc) have just recently become net sellers of JGBs as they move towards liquidation to fund retirements.

Japan currently funds more than half of their gov't via borrowing, with the demographic shift and the internal demand for JGB turning towards net negative, they will increasingly rely on external buyers of their debt. I believe China has been a buyer of late.

What has worked for Japan historically may not work so well going forward.

> In many countries it's not considered shameful to live with your parents while you're single.

I can completely understand that you want to live with your parents when you are studing (or a young working adult). But 28years+ is becoming a bit ridiculous. Maybe it is because a lot of people are not getting married anymore. But the point is that many people (and some of my friends) can not afford a really expensive apartment. Tokyo is expensive to live in.

Anyways, the point I wanted to make is the Article's comment about the clothes young people wear - it is quite deceptive to use such a metric.

> * "Japanese health care is a joke" compared to what? Look at life expectancy numbers, doctors per capita, etc.

Life expectancy is higher in Japan partly because of diet (there are not that many overweight people - that is almost the norm in USA and Aus. Even trying to get overweight with the FAtkins diet followed in USA and Australia would be prohibitively expensive in Japan).

The USA's life expectancy is also lower due yo violent crime, excessive deaths due yo traffic accidents, AIDS and other lfestyle diseases).

Yet life expectancy is not the only measure of health care. There are other factors such as quality of life. The simple fact is that dental care in Japan is far behind the west (and I am not talking about the poorest of the poor without proper dental care, but fairly rich upperclass people).

> ATMs are open 24/7 in convenience stores.

That is true, I grant you that. 7-11 ATMs are open, but you will not find your banks ATM open after 19h00 (e.g. JP postbank).

PS: The goal of my post is not for Japan bashing but trying to give an unromanticized balanced view. There are many things wrong with the Japan, just as there are many things wrong with the west.

> Firstly, yes there are many people with fancy clothes. What the author does not say is that a lot of those people live with their parents - and their whole income is expendible. I don't know if this phenomeneon started after the bubble economy, but it is quite shocking.

Living in larger family units is actually very efficient. The way we do things here in the U.S. is actually shockingly inefficient. Parents buy big houses in the suburbs when they have kids, and don't down size when the kids leave. So you have an older couple using one floor of an oversized house and the kid maintaining a separate household. Then when the kid has kids, they buy another big house in the suburbs, then pay someone thousands of dollars a month to take care of said kids after school. Meanwhile the grandparents sit around their big house bored and lonely.

There are a lot of weird cultural taboos in the U.S. that create this state of affairs, but the end result is vast inefficiency in resource usage compared to societies where bigger households are the norm.

I know a lot of people like that where I grew up. My sister jokes that if nothing else the USA is number one in self esteem.

> people don't have the means to keep themselves healthy.

Isn't that true only for US. Is employment also dysfunctionally tied to health insurance as it is in US?

> What is the end result of growth that makes societies "better"?

It depends who you ask. If you ask owners of large corporations they will look as GDP for a metric of how great a country is going. Doesn't matter if life expectancy is terrible, infant mortality, crime and corruption are high, no middle class, people living in shanty towns as long as GDP is booming the country is considered a success.

If you ask people what is makes a country good, they wouldn't care much about GDP, they would point to healthcare, crime, lack of corruption.

Unfortunately the news and the reports you get in the traditional media don't talk about that. All those analysts,"experts" and economists only care about the metric that large corporation care about. How many time have you seen on the news about "the average rate of depression in Argentina has gone up?". Not much right. But you might hear about how GDP is suffering.