Not stupid, but brainwashed perhaps. The fact remains that these predictions of Japanese hyperinflation using the EXACT same argument as yours have continued for two whole decades.
When are the predictions going to cease? How many more decades of zero inflation / deflation are needed before it becomes clear that continued deficit spending DOESN'T inevitably lead to hyperinflation? Three decades? Four decades? A century?
At what point do you start to consider your model broken and your predictions useless?
>And it would be completely true. They tried that in Zimbabwe, didn't they?
ABSOLUTELY WRONG. What they tried in Zimbabwe was borrowing a currency they DIDN'T print (US dollars). They were then reliant upon foreign food imports (because they ruined their farm indsutry) and had no real resources to service their FOREIGN debt. So they printed money and tried to exchange it for USD with predictable consequences.
Japan did not borrow USD. It will NEVER borrow USD. It will NEVER end up like Zimbabwe. Not now. Not in ten years with 300% debt. Not even with a trade deficit and 500% debt. NEVER.
Weimar was like Zimbabwe (its debts were denominated in Gold). Argentina was like Zimbabwe (it pegged its currency to the USD). Greece was like Zimbabwe (it can't print Euros any more than it can print gold).
Japan is NOT like Zimbabwe. It controls its debt. It controls its currency.
>I'm wall aware that Japan has a few magic charms
Japan has no magic charms and its trade balance is irrelevant to its capacity to borrow. It borrows in its own currency so it can borrow as much as it likes at whatever interest rates it likes. End of story.
For it to escape its economic rut this idea that it has to first pay off its huge debt needs to die. It actually needs to ramp up spending on jobs, just like the US did at the end of the great depression.
People need to stop seeing sky high Japanese debt as the cause of its stagnation and start seeing it as the result of its stagnation. Cause and effect flows the other way.