{"id":72961,"date":"2015-08-24T13:37:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T21:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=72961"},"modified":"2015-08-24T14:39:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T22:39:22","slug":"without-immigration-japanese-living-standards-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=72961","title":{"rendered":"Without Immigration, Japanese Living Standards Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comments to Steve Sailer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Paul Krugman has often noted Japan\u2019s economic performance is not too bad when you adjust for its declining and aging population.<\/a><\/p>\n

His position, which I agree with, is that Japan\u2019s gigantic, very-low-interest-debt-financed infrastructure building spree starting around 1990 was the best option available after the 80\u2032s bubble burst and threatened to drag it into a depression.<\/p>\n

Nearly lost among Unz\u2019s stable of, to put it politely, \u201ctireless critics of Zionism,\u201d is Eamonn Fingleton\u2019s recent columns<\/a>extolling the success of Japan\u2019s no-migration Keynesianism.<\/p>\n

“For a start Japanese airports are state-of-the-art and invariably these days enjoy fast public transport links to downtown areas. Meanwhile the Japanese people are among the world\u2019s best dressed and they drive some of the world\u2019s best cars \u2013 in particular Lexuses and Infinitis that are a world away from the tinny little three-wheelers of the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Then there are Japan\u2019s urban skylines. These have been transformed by a huge building boom during the \u201clost decades\u201d that has greatly alleviated Japan\u2019s previous shortage of housing space. According to figures compiled by skyscraperpage.com, already as of 2012, 81 high-rise buildings taller than 152 meters (500 feet) had been constructed in Tokyo since 1989. That compares with 64 in New York, 48 in Chicago and seven in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

The construction boom has produced many superlatives. The AkashiKaikyoBridge, linking two of Japan\u2019s main islands, boasts the longest main span of any bridge in the world \u2013 no mean feat given that the engineering challenge in bridge-building increases with the cube of the span. Then there is the world\u2019s first long-distance maglev line. Construction is well advanced, and trains will eventually run at world-record speeds of up to 350 miles an hour. Meanwhile the Tokyo Skytree skyscraper-cum-communications-tower, which was completed in 2012, boasts a height of 634 meters. This makes it the second tallest free-standing structure in the world after Dubai\u2019s Burj Khalifa.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most compelling single statistic is that just since 1989 alone, average life expectancy at birth has increased by 5.9 years \u2013 to 84.7 years from 78.8 years. This means the Japanese now typically live 4.3 years longer than Britons and 5.0 years longer than Americans.”<\/p>\n

I\u2019d add to Krugman\u2019s point further that Japan\u2019s average performance on a per capita basis is even more impressive considering that (1) it has nearly the lowest per-capita natural resources in the developed world, and this has become an increasing handicap since the long bull market in natural resources began around 1998 (2) Japan is right next to more than a billion high-IQ, low-wage, genetically similar Chinese who are intent on beating them in every market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comments to Steve Sailer: * Paul Krugman has often noted Japan\u2019s economic performance is not too bad when you adjust for its declining and aging population. His position, which I agree with, is that Japan\u2019s gigantic, very-low-interest-debt-financed infrastructure building spree … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72961"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72965,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72961\/revisions\/72965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}