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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

As a non-native who has lived in Japan for many years, but then moved to another country in Asia... I disagree with the regular stream of negative English language news about Japan. It is still a wonderful culture, people, and country.

And ignore the "GDP" stuff. You will read the same about Italy in English language newspapers. And (South) Korea. Both are also beautiful countries with great food and very high quality of life.

I look at overall GDP less than GDP-per capita. The best metric in my mind is historical median salary. This gives a great idea of how middle class people live. As long as it holds steady and inflation is zero, then quality of life does not decline. The truth is that Japan has microscopic growth (~1% per year) combined with annual population decline of ~0.5% per year. Those two together should mean quality of life is still increasing a little bit each year. And, yes, each year that I return to Tokyo, I feel it is still improving.

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I happen to know a few Italians, and unfortunately cannot agree about the quality of life. Likely it's way better than in places like Congo — no wonder! But compared to more northern Europe and the US, the difference is rather stark. Look at the unemployment figures, for instance.

Still, of course, great people, great culture, great potential.

Same with Japan: wonderful culture, nice people, but the problems are real. And somehow, I suppose, they are rooted in the same great culture as the nice things :-/

Lower classes in Italy are not as much penalized as in the US.

Eviction takes YEARS and it's just impossible in some situations (kids in the house), healthcare is free for all, personal debt is not as aggressive as here, unpaid debt is a nightmare to go afer.

So unemployment figures are not really that important to gauge quality of life. We had many scandals where people just didn't want to get hired and do small works off the books instead because life was just better like that.

You can be broke and still have a wonderful life in Italy. If you are smart and you want to get rich: much easier in the US.

Also about your Italian friends: Italian love to complain! If you ask them, they'll tell you. They will complain about everything all day with you. And then leave and go drink a nice aperitivo with their friends and enjoy the evening. It's very different from the US style of projecting an idyllic image of your life when you are with others, and then go home and drink whiskey until you forget you are alive. (Source: Italian living in US for 10 years)

Too-high GDP seems to result in a de facto aristocracy which claws as much of the wealth as possible to themselves, an issue which becomes more intractable over time re: Piketty. At both the macro and micro scale, quality of life seems to peak at the upper middle class, where there's just enough wealth that the imperative to keep everyone happy takes precedence (vs the imperative to stay at the top or keep everyone from starving on either side).

I know that Italy isn't perfect, but the Italian-style post-Imperial "chill-out" seems to work well in a lot of ways. I'm an American with no Italian heritage, but I was born there and I think I might have imprinted a bit. I hope to go back someday.

> where there's just enough wealth that the imperative to keep everyone happy takes precedence (vs the imperative to stay at the top or keep everyone from starving on either side)

Maybe

>people just didn't want to get hired and do small works off the books instead because life was just better like that.

The blue collar industries have issues hiring junior people for exactly this reason in many of the HCOL parts of the US. Nobody in their right mind wants to suffer through a couple years as a lube and tire tech when you can work when you can get paid more fixing people's cars under the table.

Sounds like the issue is that the "blue collar industries" employers need to offer higher salaries?

I'm sure their customers will completely understand, pay the higher costs without complaint, and not at all go and find alternative suppliers.

The alternative suppliers that don't have any employees?

Not necessarily in the same country.

You aren't going to be able to outsource auto maintenance to the next county, much less another country.

(The comment I originally replied to specifically referenced "lube and tire tech" as a role companies have trouble hiring for)

It's not like there's one lube and tyre company in the country, or that they don't compete with each other.

I think I misunderstood your comment

>> Sounds like the issue is that the "blue collar industries" employers need to offer higher salaries?

> I'm sure their customers will completely understand, pay the higher costs without complaint, and not at all go and find alternative suppliers.

The real issue may be that the investors won't understand, and won't take reduced profits without complaint.

Why not call your retirement fund managers and let them know you really don't need _that_ much of a pension after all.

> Why not call your retirement fund managers and let them know you really don't need _that_ much of a pension after all.

I'll take the lower pension, will you pass on the message for me? For some reason, the fund managers won't take calls from individual participants.

I'm just noting there's multiple dials here, and it's weird that it's often totally forgotten that "less profits" is just as reasonable as "higher consumer prices." Also you'll note that there are some people who profit extraordinarily from capital and have extraordinary control, and there are some people who profit much less and have even less control than that (and have little choice but to participate in the system as it exists). It's a false equivalency to equate the two.

Isn't car maintenance the kind of business that's more likely to be an SMB or family-run rather than have investors?

There's brands like Firestone and Jiffy Lube although I thought everyone knew that was a scam by now.

Why would those establishments be scam?

https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/how-jiffy-lube-got-a...

> Eviction takes YEARS and it's just impossible in some situations (kids in the house), healthcare is free for all, personal debt is not as aggressive as here, unpaid debt is a nightmare to go afer.

That may be, for now, but the problems are real. For young people with degrees, wages are not comparable with those of Nothern Europe, and many end up living with their parents for years, in between poorly paid, insecure jobs. Besides, in Nothern Europe also, the social benefits and indeed the whole economy can deteriorate.

That is quite true, its is probably very difficult for a single person in Italy to go live on their own due to house prices. But as a culture, Italians might also not feel any need to leave home as soon as other people.

I live in a neighboring country, Malta, and we share some similarities. Because our country are two small islands, housing is very expensive. So we have a unique case where a lot of people live with their parents until they get married or are in a very very stable relationship/financially well. This makes us very dependant on our parents, but it is not as bad as people make it seem. Our parents can depend on us to help and we continue saving.

There isin't a lot that can be done. Moving to one of the Northern European countries will not solve the problems our Southern countries are having.

> But as a culture, Italians might also not feel any need to leave home as soon as other people.

I agree with your points. This familial habit is a blessing for Italians, given the direction their economy is taking. It is indeed another positive cultural value that, in this case, may even reinforce societal cohesion.

Italy is a country of great contrasts. Northern Italy (such as Milan) is definitely on par with "more northern Europe".

Sorry to nitpick, but I am a regular listener to Deutsche Welle (dw.com). They have a nice weekly show called DW Africa. More info here: https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/africa/s-12756

Are you aware there are two countries that are casually referred to as "Congo" by non-Africans? (Hello Africans! We hear you loud and clear!) Sorry, this is a real issue for me. I am so tired of Western (and East Asian!) media using the broad label "African" to sweep 50 countries under the rug that have very diverse development histories.

To be clear: (1) Democratic Republic of the Congo has GDP per capita below 1000 USD per year and is one of the least developed countries in the world -- affected by unfortunate tropical diseases and civil war. (2) Republic of the Congo is doing much better! Neighbors, but a GDP per capita that is 2.5 times of DRC.

If you are aware of all of this, ignore this post. If not, please kindly educate yourself before posting about the so-called sad lives of people from "Congo" -- a place that has not existed for more than 75 years!

I do. I also remember that both were war-torn; a colossal war ("African WWI", as some call it) happened in 1996-97, with some civil wars after that.

Both DRC ($420 per capita) and RoC ($390 per capita) are not well-off, compared to more fortunate countriers relatively nearby, like Nigeria ($2140 per capita), to say nothing if e.g.Botswana ($7k per capita).

Italy, for scale, got $31630 per capita in 2020, nearly 80 times that of RoC.

>Democratic Republic of the Congo has GDP per capita below 1000 USD per year and is one of the least developed countries in the world -- affected by unfortunate tropical diseases and civil war. (2) Republic of the Congo

Reminds me of the heuristic, the more modifiers a country's name has, the more likely it is to have economic or political issues. See for example, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea vs Republic of Korea.

So what you're saying is we should change the name of The United States of America to something with only one word?

Just like the name "Liberia" and "Democratic Republic of" hint that they have no liberty and democracy respectively, the "united states" prefix hint that the states in america aren't that united (and european union isn't really a union). I remember, this was a joke from the "warlord" movie with Cage.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire - Voltaire.

I mean it’s really down to the number of times “people” is in the name.

You could rewrite “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” in English to “The People’s Rule People’s Concern of the People of Korea”. Like any good lie, repetition doesn’t make it more true, and looks desperate.

My rule of thumb:

One use indicates a dark past the people would like to get away from with citizens, not subjects; two an authoritarian regime the people are subjects of and told they are citizens; three an authoritarian regime without any hope of redemption and the people are property of.

This is easily one of my top 10 favorite HN posts.

Interesting, informative, and polite. (Last one is super important)

As an Italian living in US for 10 years now, I definitely agree. Growth means nothing to 99.9% of the population. But that very same people have not realized it yet, and all push for the needs of 0.01%.

As a regular viewer of NHK US, it’s filled with shows where the producers are non-subtly implying a country that is slowly circling the drain... but with dignity.

Show after show of very old people keeping the family business, farm or trains running. Kids off to the city, grandma literally crawling through the family peach orchard weeding. Lone western adventure cyclist droning around to largely empty roads, cultural sites, towns and always visiting “the last [insert hand skill] in the prefecture”.

It’s quite fascinating to watch, and I can’t wait to visit, but they’re not hiding it.

The US is only a couple generations behind them and we will not be going in as dignified a manner.

> I look at overall GDP less than GDP-per capita.

As you should. But a quick search suggests GDP/capita is below where it was in 95, and only exceeded it for a short period around 2010:

https://www.google.com/search?q=japan+gdp+per+capita&oq=japa...

I'm not sure that the numbers support the narrative you're putting forth here; population decline is not offsetting the lack of overall GDP growth, and the GPT/capita numbers are essentially flat.

I think it's entirely possible for both "It is still a wonderful culture, people, and country." and "three decades of economic stagnation" to be true.

> the GPT/capita numbers are essentially flat

We haven't quite reached this level of AI dystopia yet. Give it a few years. ;)

Aging society is another factor.

> It is still a wonderful culture, people, and country.

Of course it is. But that doesn't make the problems less real.

The demographic pressure cooker is still cooking-- a greater and greater proportion of national resources go to support an ever increasing fraction of the old, and stopping this is impossible at this point. Prospects for dating and marriage are collapsing for a large chunk of the populace. Government debt is increasing as a share of GDP and with the change in the dependency ratio and declining populace default looks increasingly likely in the long term.

3rd highest GDP in the world, wonder how much is just that for their pop size they are already super high. Germany looks almost no different, yet I rarely hear about German stagnation (could just be me though).

As an outsider they seem to have a lot higher quality of life than the US in many ways.

Compared to the other nations in the EU Germany is near the top in taxes, near the bottom in median wealth/savings, near the top in productivity, near the bottom in home ownership, near the top in total life-years work until retirement and near the bottom in retirement pension as percentage of the working income.

Germany was a wealthy country once, now it's a disgrace for the median citizen. It's bureaucracy is overbearing and inefficient. It's political class at once haughty, arrogant, incompetent, and corrupt.

Anyone but big business, the rich and the government paid parasitical classes (politicians, bureaucrats and the state media propagandists) gets fucked all day, every day.

Germany is a country in decline. The leadership of the ruling party of the last 16 years is indifferent if not actively hostile towards the common people while the major opposition parties are, if anything, even worse. They have the cool rationality, economic competency and sober long-sightedness of an ethanol-pickeled naked mole rat in a blast furnace.

I wish I could believe otherwise, but as things currently stand I fear that Germany is done. It'll just take a few more decades until everyone notices.

Wow, this reply is so strong. It sounds like you a person who knows Germany very well. What country do you think is doing any of these things better than Germany? Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Uruguay, Israel, South Korean, Taiwan, Japan? Please share your thoughts.

> 3rd highest GDP in the world

Yes, and slowly sliding down the list.

The demographic one is the real killer. Debt is high compared to their GDP, and their GDP is not growing, and there is a big structural headwind with the population shrinking and getting older.

> Germany looks almost no different, yet I rarely hear about German stagnation

Germany has smaller versions of the same demographic and growth problems. However, Germany's real GDP has increased by about 30% in the last 20 years, versus Japan managing about 18%. About 50% for the United States.

Over the past 30 years: 53%, 32%, 102%.

Must be pretty slow as they haven’t changed positions yet.

My stats show Japan looking the same as Germany last 10 years, and near many other European countries.

Japan's real PPP GDP 4.634T in 2009, 5.261T in 2019 = 13.5% growth in 10 years.

Germany 3.696T in 2009, 4.471T in 2019 = 20.9%.

Japan grew at 2/3rds the rate of Germany in the last 10 years, against the backdrop of a significantly worse 10 years before that.

The shape of the graph looks similar, but the difference between 1.019^n and 1.012^n over a long time is massive. Not to mention that Germany is not particularly healthy.

It's rather spectacular if you look at the per capita PPP GDP series, actually-- https://i.imgur.com/eD8cECd.png

Yes, it'll be about 23 years at the present pace for Germany to surpass Japan in absolute terms, but Japan has a much larger population and Germany has better prospects for long term growth.

Germany's debt is ~60% of GDP, and Japan's is 240%, too, which is pretty terrifying when GDP is not growing much and may begin to contract in absolute terms from demographic changes.

All well and good, still, the perception and reality I don't think match. I've had this conversation many times where people just instinctually cite 'oh Japan is in decline, doing really poorly, etc', and then I tell them they are 3rd highest GDP in the world, had a huge growth wave in the mid-2010s and I get pikachu-face shocked reactions. Even here, I think you're falling for the meme.

Here's a better graph: https://imgur.com/a/2QI5E41

It's funny, your graph cuts off right before it, and is a perfect example of extrapolating too soon. It's that one big recession dip, and since then are doing better, and before that doing better. More spurts, higher angles recently.

My graph cuts off at the same time (2019).

I think there is some misunderstanding here about reading a graph for growth rate. Anything that starts off higher is likely to have "higher angles" even if it shows a lower growth rate. Which looking at the numbers, we see-- we already did the arithmetic a couple posts ago. Part of why the per capita series looks so bad: it starts at about the same value so the effect of a higher baseline is not so misleading.

The debt to GDP problem, combined with anemic GDP growth and population structural factors that make high growth unlikely for a century, combine to be a big concern that you haven't addressed. Instead you handwave at graphs in a way that doesn't boost anyone's understanding.

I think Germany taking two decades to catch up combined with Japans higher growth outside the recession looks better, I’d bet Japan next decade based on a lot of things, mostly software and tech. The debt may be a factor, but that’s a hypothesis not a fact so you should state it as such, it’s not stopped other countries from defaulting.

Easy to endlessly discuss this though, but without good faith on your side it won’t go anywhere useful.

I stand strongly by the point that anyone spouting Japan stagnation memes is just repeating shallow media talking points that are outdated and don’t reflect reality on the ground... yea, stagnation from a trajectory to be bigger than the US in GDP from a tiny island nation. Without so so many of the problems of the US. The quality of life there is incredibly high, they’re incredibly rich, they’re adjusting many soft factors to be better to work, women, and newer economic abilities.

It’s very roughly like if everyone went around talking about how Ferrari is stagnating, when they’ve had 2/5 popular cars in the last decade (incl one this year) and most other carmakers had 3/5 (but most none this year). Ok, maybe you can argue that, and I wouldn’t agree but fine, but it’s still a Ferrari and the rest of the world is driving Kia. The meme has gotten so strong people are actually out there now thinking Kia > Ferrari. I’m just bringing perspective to how it feels day to day there.

Where is the higher growth? I divided 2019 by 2009 GDP much earlier in the thread for the two countries we are talking about, and got a smaller number for Japan.

Don't accuse me of bad faith when you will not address this point. You keep telling me about higher or similar growth when the numbers do not support it.

As to the debt picture: it becomes more difficult to grow GDP to cover large debt when the working age population is destined to shrink relatively sharply. The demographic squeeze isn't a opinion or theory-- it is a certainty. Even liberalizing immigration policy would not be enough now, and there have only been the tiniest steps in that direction.

I would have been on the opposite side of this argument for a long time-- enthusiastic and optimistic for Japan's economics trends to improve, and a fan of many of the country's institutions. But at this point, there has been decades of underperformance-- yes, from a track to outpace the US's GDP on an absolute level to now being 2/3rds of it on a per-capita basis, with ongoing slower growth and terrible demographic trends.

The dependency ratio is going to be 0.79 people 65+ for every person 20-64 in 30 years, and the overall population will be 25% smaller. The working age population will be 33% smaller. This is a very difficult environment to have significant absolute growth in.

And, again, comparing to Germany is silly... because many of us are also concerned about the same factors-- underperforming growth, demographic shifts -- in Germany.

Germany isn’t doing bad.

Here’s your same PPP/GDP graph with a bunch of first world nations, the USA Uk etc + Mexico and Russia, last 5 years or so.

Please point out the Japan line which should by your argument be an even semi obvious outlier.

https://ibb.co/Btm0ymb

All I’ve claimed is at best you can say they are slightly below average for a first world nation, and still very high in absolute terms. To refute, you’d have to show that they are significantly lagging, not just a little as that’s not been my claim ever. It’s just not there. The hype is real.

> Please point out the Japan line which should by your argument be an even semi obvious outlier.

It's like you don't understand my main point: it is difficult to judge differences growth on a linear scale graph. It's like the dishonest COVID-19 graphs early on which showed coronavirus in comparison to other causes of death, and you couldn't see exponential growth it looked boring.

That's why sometimes it's useful to use a log scale, or to just divide the numbers and compare them, to understand rates of growth.

I think I see why we disagree: your entire argument is based on eyeballing (misleading, linear) graphs instead of comparing numbers. I have hit this point 4 times in the thread so far, and you keep making an argument based on eyeballing graphs.

You should be a politician! Incredible work.

Log scale is absolutely not the right measure, actually didn’t even see that nifty trick because I would never have expected it used! No wonder your graph looked totally wrong. Log scale would work if they were staying constant so we could compare on long time scales, but that’s so far from the case. If you can’t admit that, we can’t have a discussion. You really should know that to be talking about this stuff.

These are close values that are fluctuating too much. The swings over the last 10 years is relevant, in absolute values. I can write the numbers out for you, but the graphs are actually less refutable. You insinuate they aren’t, but they are they’re than numbers for this use: comparing relative performance. We want to see how they all are doing, in a straightforward comparison.

No, my point is you’re choosing your window very selectively and distorting the numbers to fit your narrative, and when I take the window away your point doesn’t stand, as it doesn’t

When one wants to compare growth rates between things with different starting points, one uses a logarithmic scale.

Things growing at the same rate are parallel then.

I compared things on a 30 year, 20 year, and 10 year timescale. On each of them, Germany significantly outperformed Japan.

The premise and conclusion are wrong. You want to compare the whole picture not just growth form your arbitrary start at the peak of a mountain (your false framing). And you can just adjust them to the same Y axis, no need for log. We care about the marginal dollar.

You’re doing a lot of work avoiding looking at the graph I posted in earnest. It’s the right graph, and again you can’t choose an outlier.

I strongly disagree it's the right graph. I wonder if you're just trolling at this point. Comparing growth rates of countries by looking at absolute values of dollars from countries of different sizes is madness.

I've given you 5 different framings at this point:

* Real GDP PPP % change over 30, 20, and 10 years to the most recent fully reported year. * Share of high-income country GDP over last 20 years * Per capita PPP GDP over 30 years, where it slid from parity with Germany in 2005 to about 80% of Germany's.

But they're all bad in favor of looking at a linear scale graph, where starting from a higher value in the green series obscures that the percentage of growth is low compared to most of the members of the set.

If you're determined to believe a specific conclusion, there's not much point in discussion.

The second graph I posted is GDP PPP, please tell me how the light blue line is an outlier.

This is how things look, as far as shares of upper-income country GDP: https://i.imgur.com/CaUcjcH.png

This is a reasonable graph to "eyeball" because it's not distorted significantly by starting point or overall underlying growth trend.

Neither Germany nor Japan looks great, and Japan looks worse. Then you consider Japan has 1.5x the population and a lower per-capita GDP...

Sorry, but I feel GDP is meaningless when discussing quality of life for average people. Example: China is now regularly touted as having the world second largest GDP, recently surpassing Japan. But GDP per capita is more than a decade away from catching up (and that is optomistic). Also, even GDP per capita isn't a very good measurement if wealth distribution is very skews or social mobility is very low.

Your point is orthogonal to the stagnation issue. Yes, Japan is still a wonderful place to live, the best in the world I’d personally say. But it is most certainly stagnating. There’s enough momentum, cultural advantage, and existing wealth to continue to carry it forward for quite a while, but the energy and ambition is gone. That’s what GP was describing and that’s what the Yamauchi family is targeting.

I also love the gesture, but it obviously won’t do much on the grand scale. Not even the massive 2011 disaster was enough to light the fire again.

Thank you for your honest reply.

Here is a thought experiment about growth: What if Google never grew again, but maintained the same revenues and profits going forward? To be clear: Their stock price would crash because portfolio theory teaches us that stock price is an indication of future earnings growth. This is what Japan looks like in my mind: Very rich and developed by global standards, but mostly economically stagnant.

"Not even the massive 2011 disaster was enough to light the fire again." Zero trolling: Are you aware of the special tax for reconstruction in Japan? (I pay it.) It runs for 40 or 50 years and will collect billions (USD) to rebuild and reinvigorate the affected regions. I went on a road trip through Iwate prefecture 2.5 years ago. They are rebuilding. Yes, most places feel like eerie "potemkin villages", but I am confident they can rebuild.

I completely agree with your first point; that's a good analogy. Japan is very successful and stable, but shows no signs of future growth potential.

I wasn't talking about rebuilding after the disaster; I know they're doing that (and I also pay the tax). I was talking about lighting the fire of ambition and innovation in Japan again. At the time I had hope that the scale of the disaster and impact on the nation's psyche might be enough to awaken the spirit again like the Meiji Restoration or the Economic Miracle. However, all that happened is they committed to rebuilding and turned off a lot of the lights.

Well in your thought experiment, Google choosing to shift priorities away from growth towards stability could ultimately lead to being dethroned as other companies seek to undercut them through competition.

Rebuilding is not a problem. It is the birth rate that is a problem. Tokyo is vacuuming everyone from countryside. You get some refugees in their 30s moving back but it is a trickle.

This fund is a typical Japanese corporate bullshit. You can see who manages it an know everything you need to.

They could just pay 10mil yen stipend per child after second and it would be far more effective. Japan needs young people, period. Not more taxes, infrastructure etc

I lived in Japan for a while, loved it. But the crash when it comes in 10-20years as countryside disintegrates is going to be horrific.

Sorry for my late reply. This comment is brilliant: <<They could just pay 10mil yen stipend per child after second and it would be far more effective. Japan needs young people, period. Not more taxes, infrastructure etc>> I agree: A massive child bonus might really shift the mindset of couples to have another child. At the very least, it would be a humane, worthy social experiment, akin to universal basic income. I wonder what (South) Korea and Italy are going to do. Their demographics are looking more and more like Japan everyday.

The GDP growth and sense that Japan is falling behind is what the family claims is their motivating factor.

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