February 24, 2010 – 4:57 pm
I was thinking about what it would take for China’s economy to get far bigger than it is now, in the context of increasing their per-capita GDP (which is the primary correlate to individual prosperity).
By the back of my envelope, China has one of the most unequal societies on earth, far worse than ours. People who live in certain large cities live almost as well as we do, while hundreds of millions are near starvation. (China also has 500 million cellphone and internet users. We have 300 million total people.)
Anyway, China is trying to grow the same way that Japan and Germany did, through exports aided by an undervalued currency. The fact that our economy is now in secular decline puts a limit on China’s ability to grow this way, in addition to the simple fact that the numbers don’t work. China and India (which is trying to do largely the same thing) are together 2.5 billion people, eight times bigger than we are. Germany and Japan in the Fifties were together about 1.5 times bigger than us, and South Korea in the Sixties a small fraction of that.
300 million Americans all buying Made In China…
February 15, 2010 – 10:05 am
There’s an ever-shifting balance between the goals of forcing society’s commitments to be borne more-or-less exclusively by those with high incomes, and the imperative of not destroying the economic incentives that produce income in the first place. The need to find this balance is a universal problem, not specific to 21st century America.
By Francis Cianfrocca
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Posted in Features, Market
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Debt, deficits, economy, EU, European Union, Eurozone, Fiscal Policy, Greece, VAT
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February 4, 2010 – 9:15 am
Japan is up the creek without a paddle. It’s pretty remarkable to hear a BoJ governor saying things that some aggressive hedge-fund guys have been whispering for a while now.
September 12, 2009 – 9:50 am
For years, North Korean has tried to subvert the six-party talks that included it, the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, in favor of trying to get the United States to conduct business bilaterally with the Hermit Kingdom. The United States resisted this; quite properly pointing out that South Korea and Japan had a lot of skin in the game, and could not be wished away from the talks. Moreover, China and Russia were needed to exert pressure and influence on North Korea.
September 1, 2009 – 12:15 am
Choose your torture: a good waterboarding, some SERE training with the Special Forces, a Cher concert — I’d choose any of them over being trapped in a cocktail party, much less on an island, while being harangued by Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s new Prime-Minister-in-Waiting, about why he’s the reincarnation of Themistocles.
August 31, 2009 – 8:55 am
A New Ledger forum I was privileged to take part in.
August 31, 2009 – 12:44 am
What do Japan’s elections mean for the United States? Japan’s dramatic electoral turn this weekend, in which the center-right longtime ruling party of the LDP was rejected in favor of the DPJ and Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, is the subject of the latest forum of the New Ledger’s editors.
Can North Korea, an impoverished, backwards and technologically inept concentration camp disguised as a country, pose any reasonable threat? The answer is yes — but those threats may not be what you would expect.
As an 80s child, I remember well all of the dour, solemn, and alarmed predictions that eventually, Japan would overtake the United States in terms of economic power, and that this would signal a decline in America’s overall ability to influence world events.
What the moment demands is bold international leadership to solidify our allies and friends in the area and to intimidate North Korea and China into calling off this preposterous missile test. Barring that, expect Japan to look out for itself–and if it does shoot down the Taepodong launch, the world will become a much more dangerous place.
