Re: "For Japan, a Long, Slow Slide: Declines in Productivity, Population Combining to Stifle Economic Growth"
- From: royls@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:06:14 GMT
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 10:38:48 -0800 (PST), Mike <yard22192@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
For Japan, a Long, Slow Slide
Declines in Productivity, Population Combining to Stifle Economic
Growth
As serious as it is now, Japan's demographic decline will almost
certainly get far worse over the next 30 years. Its post-WW II baby
boom peaked in 1950, and the "echo boom" in 1973. This year, the
biggest age cohort turns 35, and the women will begin leaving their
child-bearing years. So Japan's already alarmingly low birth rate is
certain to go even lower. This shows how Japan's demographic pyramid
will likely change from 2000 to 2050:
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=JA&out=s&ymax=250&submit=
[snip]
"The current leadership of Japan came of age during the incredible
success after World War II," said Matsumoto. "They think that what
worked then will work forever."
Actually, no. They are not even aware of what worked then. Japan's
rapid growth in the 1950s and 60s was the result of the land reform
imposed by MacArthur after the war and high land taxation, a fact of
which almost no one in Japan today is aware. As land values soared in
the 1970s and 80s, assessments fell far behind, and land taxes rapidly
declined as a fraction of both total government revenue and true
market value -- virtually in lockstep with the decline in the
country's average economic growth.
Japan is still among the top half-dozen OECD countries in the fraction
of total government revenue derived from land taxation (the others are
the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Switzerland), but it is no longer
the leader. Consequently, Japan today has only an ordinary,
low-growth advanced economy, not the dynamic, high-growth economy it
enjoyed for decades following the end of the Allied occupation in
1952.
-- Roy L
.
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