tuj

Japan's Faith in Strong Dollar Policy Is Laughable

Right, Japan should want to take steps to devalue the Yen relative to the USD so they can continue their exports' competitiveness. And certainly the US is still (for now) the major consumption base.

Japan Is Raising Its Risk Profile

How can the Japanese allow the Yen to appreciate against USD (and already having appreciated some against the EUR) when their economy is going to run into serious demographic problems? They have already given incentives to migrant workers to return to their home countries and *never return.* Yet the native population is aging and the rural population is especially in decline. I'm baffled why the Yen is so strong against the USD? Don't they have Toyola's and Wii's to sell?

Learning from Japan

"The key to less breeding
is liberty, freedom,
which leads to prosperity."

NO! Actually its vaccines! There have been many studies done on this. If you prevent illnesses from killing children before they reach adulthood, obviously more survive. Now this seems initially counter-intuitive, but parents in poor countries have many kids to make sure some survive to adulthood and also survive to care for them when they are older. If you can increase the confidence in those survival rates, you decrease the birthrate that people will sustain to feel confident in their future. And studies confirm this (see "The Bottom Billion").

Besides, liberty is defined as the Freedom to Act, usually without the government interfering. Aside from China, I don't know of any country that has policies on breeding, particularly to the up-side....

You need to fulfill a hierarchy of needs. Liberty and freedom mean nothing without basic life necessities. Or without basic rule-of-law/security. Magic "freedom" does not lead to prosperity; it is one of the results of prosperity, and there is almost certainly a threshold of prosperity a nation must obtain before things like a liberal-democracy can be implemented well.

Consider Afghanistan after the Soviet Union left, or recent Somalia. The vacuum of power has people turn to whatever source of security they can, in those two cases, Sharia law. Many people did not think it the best choice, nor were they particularly happy with those 'running' the system, but they accepted it and embraced it willingly over anarchy.