During the 1990s, Japanese politicians rewarded their friends and supporters with an unprecedented increase in public-works spending, leaving the private part of Japan’s GDP to increase a mere 1.5 percent over a decade that also experienced a 2.7 percent increase in the population. Is this the same country that alarmists in the 1980s warned would soon supersede the United States?
Robert Higgs is Retired Senior Fellow in Political Economy, Founding Editor and former Editor at Large of The Independent Review.
AsiaDefense and Foreign PolicyInternational Economics and Development
Other Independent Review articles by Robert Higgs
Fall 2019 Pressure-Release Valves in Participatory Fascism
Winter 2018/19 Two Worlds: Politics and Everything Else
Fall 2018 Against the Whole Concept and Construction of the Balance of International Payments
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