I'd argue in many ways we off worse than japan
savings (Japan heavy savers) heavy saving bad as far as deflation and stock markets but as far as social stability and your average joe he has a cushion if things go bad.. We ha e been beaten into this mentality that deflation a bad thing.. Its not so simple.. For savers with a good education, stable job, and some economic understanding to see through all the media bullshit.. it can be a very good thing.. Deflation teaches/forces personal ecomonmic conservatism and savings .. Obviously out country needs a lot of that .. Vs spending for today debt slaves..
educated population .. Us brain drain comical yes we got some bright people and decent influx of bright ones from outside in our melting pot.. But the dumb ones with no savings with no future the main ones multiplying here... And they've become a very entitled society believing government owes them something.. Bernie hyper socialist has a better chance the worse economy gets going into election...dependency on government has never been higher.. And Japan nowhere close to us in that
unhealthy population .. Way u healthier thN Japan... Baby boomer generation hitting us .. And most fat unhealthy slobs.. That we can now keep alive for a while through modern medicine.. Gonna cost taxpayer pretty penny .. Just debt more I guess?
domestic demand for anything outside the health care industry will be crap for a long time going forward only real growth out there are us multinationals in developing economies.. I mean you got Netflix, good, amazon etc but that's just displacement their gain at expense of the old way of doing things.. China has been global engine for a while.. They pushed to hard to fast too .. Pushing economic activity forward again for the sake of stability at the sacrifice the the future ... creating things like big buildings/empty cities that nobody can afford...
Savings - Yeah, we bastardized our system. We can't handle any deflation because it creates a crumbling house of cards scenario. When all it should create is a minor contraction cycle. I do think if SHTF for real we could bring the cost of living down significantly if we truly wanted to in fields like education, health care, housing and possibly food production. Not sure on the last 1. I'll let you respond to that being from the heartland.
Educated population - We have the dumbest people but we also have the smartest. With our infrastructure in terms of big business/university research we have the most likely chance to innovate our way out of a mess. I do think we're coming into a time of accelerating innovation (although not sure how a recession would slow the rate of that but I know it wouldn't help) Any deflation just creates a debt spiral now.
Unhealthy population - Yeah this is awful. 1 of the biggest problems we have. A lot of companies that serve garbage need to go out of business. Huge drain on the system.
One thing you do leave out is the fact that we're a resource rich country and Japan has nothing. Granted this has driven them to innovate out of necessity but they can't top us in innovation. We have more oil, coal, nat gas, manufacturing, materials, industrial power, land etc
Even our economy at 90% of capacity I'm not sure how bad it would get. We do have a lot of rich natural resources and some of our problems can be fixed very quickly if there is a true necessity to do so.
A lot of overpaid people living off the bubble will need to have their standard of living significantly downgraded though. Specifically in the fields of education and health care. So many admin/office jobs in these fields just living off taxpayer subsidization.
The system just needs to unwind. Rapid innovation/overall standard of living increase is the answer. The only way an extended recession cycle would be tolerable to most of the population.
