They’re trying to defend their currency and interest rates at the same time. Already the Yen has taken a beating this year. They are at high risk of a huge economic shock.
They’ve been able to postpone it, but just like getting out of a bad stock trade, only the first movers can do it, which means others can’t copy the Japanese strategy. Also, there are tons of specifics for Japan, such as education, economic drivers, geography and supply chains that make it unique, so it would be even harder to copy.
Japanese work long hours and don't make very much money. The average salary is just under 54k USD. People continue to work well into old age and in many ways Japan's culture and history are becoming lost due to the rural/suburban exodus.
This is happening on every country on earth and for good reason. Cities are more efficient. (Growth Ponzi Scheme)
> Japanese work long hours and don't make very much money.
That's culture and not an economic necessity. They also have a months holiday, maternity leave, and healthcare isn't 20% gdp. The French would say that Americans work a lot for little pay.
> People continue to work well into old age
Common in the west as well. Many countries have pushed back pension age since 2000.
> Japan's culture and history are becoming lost due to the rural/suburban exodus.
Cultures changes over time. Italian culture Italian culture did not include tomato sauces or pizza not to long ago. Hell, Italy wasn't a country! France didn't have a unified language until Napoleon
This is missing the point. It's like saying "the entire US population wants to move to Washington DC because that's where the jobs are".
But even in those places that are dying, people take great care to preserve and prolong Japanese culture and history. It is perhaps the country most interested in its own history and culture in all the world.
Meanwhile, the US has had any number of highly-adversarial, occasionally-violent political fights in the last decade while still in that "grow the top line" mindset.
You could make a plausible argument that those additional few decades of "growth" has a lot to do with the violence and unrest, even, not the other way around. (For instance, see any of a number of takes from all over the political spectrum blaming increasing stratification of elites.)
Hell, wasn't Marx predicting internal upheaval and self-defeat of capitalist economies many, many decades ago based on the same sort of demographics/populations/resources economic arguments? Things will change is an easy prediction, they haven't ever been stable. But it's also a meaningless one if you can't convincingly show that it's this decade not "any time between 10 and 200 years from now."
The only place he mentions grief (rather than "demographic change requires economic change") is at the very end, with "And any large scale shift in economic models comes with some grief, at the very least." Nowhere else.
Some grief. As a footnote. That's hardly quantified, and itself could be covered simply by the fact change is hard. Japan was forced into changing, and...it went fine. The US hasn't yet. It'll require adjustment, which will probably bring some unpleasantness as we all adapt. That isn't alarmist, which was my point.