<story><title>Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis</title><url>http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-three/turning-japanese-coping-with-stagnation.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>timeal</author><text>Why so many negative comments? Japan certainly seems to outshine the US according to multiple metrics, so they are doing something right:&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;s unemployment rate is 3.6% vs 5.5% for the US: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/results/month/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.stat.go.jp&amp;#x2F;english&amp;#x2F;data&amp;#x2F;roudou&amp;#x2F;results&amp;#x2F;month&amp;#x2F;inde...&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;data.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;timeseries&amp;#x2F;LNS14000000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;s homelessness rate is 20 per 100,000 population (25,000 homeless people in 2001) vs 220 per 100,000 in the US: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=q-PgHH8TJi8C&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;books.google.com&amp;#x2F;books?id=q-PgHH8TJi8C&amp;amp;printsec=front...&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/2012AHAR_PITestimates.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.onecpd.info&amp;#x2F;resources&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;2012AHAR_PITesti...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;s incarceration rate is 50 per 100,000 population vs 710 per 100,000 for the US.&lt;p&gt;Japan is even on track to stop increasing their public deficit by this year (thanks to the new sales tax) whereas the US is far from being on budget. And Japan even manages to achieve this despite a significantly aging demographics (lots of social benefits paid to non-working people), compare &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/japan-population-pyramid-2014.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.indexmundi.com&amp;#x2F;graphs&amp;#x2F;population-pyramids&amp;#x2F;japan-p...&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2012/3/28/saupload_3-28-us.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;static.seekingalpha.com&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;saupload_3-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Japan&amp;#x27;s society seems to be functioning better than the US. I appreciate this article for trying to find out why.</text></comment>
<story><title>Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis</title><url>http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-three/turning-japanese-coping-with-stagnation.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>LukeHoersten</author><text>&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;Do rich societies really need to get richer and richer indefinitely?&amp;quot; he asks.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;They do if they are going to pay off their mega-debt. The real fear is when the GDP drops below the yearly interest payments.&lt;p&gt;I feel the same when I go to nice European countries. &amp;quot;Wow everything is so nice&amp;quot; and then I remind myself that Germany is paying for it all. It&amp;#x27;s not sustainable. Look at some of the Scandinavian countries for nice mass public transit in a more sustainable setting.</text></comment>