Readers of The Cobden Centre blog may be interested in the recent report from Kaleidic Economics. It focuses on an analysis of Japan’s “lost decade”, and how this relates to the UK. In particular, it assesses some of the academic literature – especially from the Austrian school perspective – about whether the lost decade is a myth or reality, and what the root causes were.
You can download the report here (PDF).
One of the scary things about Japan is that the political (and academic and media?) leadership appear to have learned nothing.
They still think that the government spending more money (“Stimulus” plan on top of “Stimulus” plan) will solve their problems – they are in a hole, yet they keep digging.
Of course the “international community” keep giving them bad advice – for example the endless advice from the Economist magazine and the Financial Times newspaper to…..
INCREASE taxes.
Yes – even according to their Keynesian ideology the international elite should be calling for the reduction of taxation in Japan, yet they are actually calling for taxation to be INCREASED.
This is radical statism – for the sake of radical statism.
I don’t claim to have any serious economic knowledge, but I’ve always thought it was a myth. Japan had, and still has an ageing population. People who’ve worked hard all their lives and saved hard too, why is anyone bothered about this? These people should be sat at home enjoying their lives, but the government is totally destroying the fruits of their labour through inflation. With more elderly Japanese being forced back into work. This is what happens when you let intellectual economists run the world.
Coming soon to the local friendly United States of America near you, possibly as soon as October 2, 2013. The only chance of stalling this lies in the hands of the too-loyal opposition who are busy helping their incompetent overlord sell his bogus bomb the Syrians back to the hunter/gatherer age scam to a rather skeptical base. Heard on the radio today that the IMF has ‘ordered’ our very own chopper wizard, an affectionate term for our Federal Reserve Chair who can be likened to the pilot of an Apache helicopter flying over the highways and byways throughout the land tossing big bundles of freshly created money on a grateful populace below, to keep up the good work accomplished by QE-forever, or else. Yep, it has really done great things for us Yanks. Here’s the full list: __, __, __, __, __ and __. There will be a short quiz tomorrow. Good luck.
In the meantime on October 1, our federal fiscal year 2014 will be born. This year it has an evil twin brother, affectionately named the ‘unaffordable don’t-really care tax. Why ‘tax’ and not ‘act’? Because so decreed John Roberts when he cast the deciding vote granting this most tyrannical piece of tyranny ever foisted on the American people (and considering the progressive bull crap they’ve swallowed these past 100 years that’s saying something) the cover of faux-constitutionality.
The loyal opposition has a long shot chance of at least giving it a flat tire, but so far are more concerned with exempting themselves, their staffs and all their cronies while sticking it to the rest of us than actually obeying their oath of office. Already businesses are shutting down, laying off, whatever they can, to keep their doors open despite the odds being stacked against them. This will not end well.
Andy V, if you understand the link between artificially inflating the money supply and wiping out individual wealth through price and tax increases, your economic knowledge is more serious than you think.