Well, Paul Krugman's column (which I will generously gift link) is mainly about what happened to Japan, but it does refer to China too:
These days the focus of anxiety about global competition has shifted from Japan to China, which is a bona fide economic superpower: Adjusted for purchasing power, its economy is already bigger than ours. But China has seemed to be faltering lately, and some have been asking whether China’s future path might resemble that of Japan.
My answer is that it probably won’t — that China will do worse. But to understand why I say that, you need to know something about what happened to Japan, which wasn’t at all the catastrophe I think many people imagine.
Krugman's argument is that Japan's basic problem is its demography, and that it has done reasonably well, considering.
As usual, he's easy to understand and presents a reasonable argument.
Krugman is right about Japan's demography problem. That is becoming true for many nations. China has many more problems. I remember people arguing Japan was doomed because of massive debt. Year in year out, it will collapse this year! It was nonsense and ScoMo's comparison with a mortgage was either propaganda or he is an idiot for making the comparison. National debt can be a problem if a nation loses productivity and competitiveness.
ReplyDeleteBTW I recently saw a youtube vid where a young bloke was saying how even in Tokyo they are giving away apartments.
Thanks for the share.