1/OK so people wanted a thread on how 2010s America is becoming 1990s Japan, so here we go.
The most obvious similarity is economic. Japan had a giant real estate bubble burst in the early 90s. Ours burst in the late 2000s.
2/The result for Japan was a "lost decade" of low growth. For us the slowdown was milder, but we still had one.
3/In both countries, the central bank responded by lowering interest rates to 0. Ours have recently come up slightly; Japan's never did.
4/Both countries suffered slow wage growth. Japan's was worse.
5/Along with slow wage growth and slow economic growth, both countries suffered low business dynamism - not a lot of new businesses getting started. In both countries, that trend predated the crisis.
Big business thus became more powerful in both places.
6/And in both countries, fertility rates fell after the crisis. Japan's fell more. But both countries were looking at the prospect of an aging population.
7/Add these trends up:
* slower wage growth
* big business dominance
* more old people being supported by fewer young people
The result: A loss of hope for the future.
8/And yet despite these diminished prospects, Japanese kids in the 1990s found themselves still having to study like crazy in order to have a shot at one of those big corporate jobs.
9/Of course, soul-crushing college prep was for the kids whose parents thought they had a shot at the top jobs. Working-class kids dropped out of the college rat race.
Sound familiar?
10/Some blame school pressure and economic hopelessness for the rise of another trend in 1990s Japan: hikikomori, or shut-ins who never left their houses.
14/One disturbing trend from 90s Japan was "enjo kosai", or teen prostitution, where teen girls would meet middle-aged men and either sleep with them or string them along for money and gifts.
16/So:
* economic stagnation
* entrenched big corporations
* massive pressure to take tests and get into college
* lost and aimless (and often sexless) youth
2010s America = 1990s Japan!
But there are some big differences...
17/For one thing, 1990s was the height of Japanese pop (and underground) culture.
When people around the world fall in love with Japan, what they're often falling in love with is the 90s and early 00s.
18/American pop and underground culture, in contrast, doesn't seem to be experiencing a similar efflorescence (though of course that's subjective and hard to judge).
19/Another difference is political. Japanese politics was very dysfunctional in the 1990s. They went through 7 prime ministers and other chaos.
20/But Japan never experienced the ugly populist politics of 2010s America. There was no big backlash against minorities (Koreans) or foreigners. There was no strongman like Trump.
21/So I don't want to overextend the analogy here.
In economic terms, and sometimes in social terms, 2010s America has followed in the footsteps of 1990s Japan. But in political terms we're responding to our slowdown in a different and decidedly more frightening way.
22/Frankly, America could do worse at this point than to follow in Japan's footsteps. If Trump were followed by a reformist liberal nationalist like Shinzo Abe, I'd be very happy.
FWIW, I think "culture war concessions" works only at the level of the candidate, not at the level of policy -- when it works at all. Nothing could ever have convinced America that Obama was socially conservative, even though he was and is.
Biden is making all kinds of compromises and concessions on immigration, and no one is recognizing it or caring (except for progressives who notice and get mad).
You saw the same exact pattern with Jimmy Carter. By the end of his presidency he had tacked so far to the Right that progressives primaried him with Ted Kennedy and almost won. But Republicans kept on thinking he was leftism incarnate.
3/Biden got off to a good start, passing a Covid relief bill that included a pioneering Child Tax Credit similar to Canada's successful program, passing an infrastructure bill that repaired roads and did some other good stuff, and passing a semiconductor industry support bill.
1. NYC building styles range from "fairly ugly" to "very ugly", but Americans love them because NYC is our only dense city, so Americans associate those building styles with urban density
2. Star Trek DS9 was neocon. It glorified a morally inspired leader engaging in preemptive war with an enemy who would never see reason and only respected force.
All the usual suspects are jumping all over Lisa Cook's paper from 2014 and pointing out small errors. But Ken Rogoff served on the Fed Board of Governors and I bet you nobody combed over his papers for errors before he was confirmed! And I bet you he made a few.
Econ academia has very little quality control for data errors. When people do comb over papers for mistakes, they generally find them.
We need a Xillennial-Zillennial alliance, of people who are just a little too old for Millennial bullshit and people who just are a little too young for Millennial bullshit.
Anyone who was born 1980-1986 or 1997-2003 is in the Xillennial-Zillennial alliance. We must unite against the people whose brains were broken by coming of age between the Great Recession and Trump.
The people in that middle decade shall be known as the Harry Potter Generation